Coinciding with the inauguration of the 61st Venice Art Biennale, collector Patrizia Sandretto has opened a new venue for her collection, the third, which has become the sensation of these days. The artistic center is located on the island of San Giacomo, and for now can only be visited by invitation and by private boat. Guests received a message with a QR code and, later, another with the location of the departure point for the boat. It is planned that a vaporetto will arrive in the future, but it will probably be in 2027. Patrizia Sandretto and her husband, businessman Agostino Re Rebaudengo, have restored some old military facilities that were in ruins and, as one of the crown jewels of the place, they commissioned the North American artist Hugh Hayden, which culminated in a chapel with an exceptional bell tower, because it is tilted about 40°, also on the inside.

The protest called by the Art Not Genocide Alliance (ANGA) against Israel's presence at the Venice Art Biennale has had consequences. The Giardini venue opened its doors at 10 in the morning with many pavilions closed, including those of Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria, and Japan. The situation of the Spanish pavilion, on the other hand, has been bizarre: it started the day open, but closed at two in the afternoon "due to the artistic team's strike." A quarter of an hour later, sources from the pavilion stated that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had communicated that they had been forced to reopen, and immediately afterwards that they were closing until 3 p.m., while "conversations were ongoing with the Minister of Foreign Affairs," a portfolio from which the pavilion depends. Finally, the pavilion reopened at 3 p.m.

Catalonia and the Balearic Islands take center stage at the 61st Venice Art Biennale. The project by Claudia Pagès Paper tears [Paper tears] gains momentum with a poetic and political slam by Pagès herself and her collaborators that ranges from the most intimate to political and social critique, addressing the ravages of colonialism. The starting point for her discourses are a string of 15th-century watermarks found in the Museu Molí Paperer de Capellades. "Crowned heart. Crowned heart. Incel's dream. incel. 1486. Crowned love is not love. It is the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Little emperor, everyone loves you as long as you keep them alive! What strange references," says one of these texts.

Where God invites, everyone has a place. Patti Smith, who still sings that Jesus died for someone's sins, but not hers, now glosses the virginity of the Virgin Mary in a poem that can be heard in the Vatican pavilion of the Venice Art Biennale. To hear Smith, and about twenty other artists, including Brian Eno, FKA Twigs, Dev Hynes, Terry Riley, and Jim Jarmusch, you have to get away from the center of Venice and go to the paradisiacal Mystical Garden of the Carmelites of Venice, one of the least crowded corners of the city, just behind the train station. The trip, despite the rain these days, is worth it. The proposal is by star curator Hans Ulrich Obrist, it is titled The ear is the eye of the soul andis inspired by Hildegard of Bingen, the great mystic, scientist, composer of the 12th century. The pavilion staff hand out headphones at the entrance, and the visit consists of walking through the garden in silence listening to the twenty or so works, among which there are also those by musicians who delve into spirituality such as Meredith Monk, Kali Malone, and Charlemagne Palestine.

The 61st Venice Art Biennale continues with fury. This Wednesday the protests against the presence of Russia and Israel have been more forceful. As they had warned, more than 50 people linked to the activists Pussy Riot, with their faces covered by pink balaclavas, have occupied the Russian pavilion, along with a string of members of the Femen collective. The Italian police were forced to close the pavilion while agents and security guards subdued the activists who had managed to enter. Outside, the tension continued: the protesters sang the song Desobeeix amid a cloud of pink smoke and the Femen members advanced shouting slogans amid a cloud of blue and yellow, the colors of the Ukrainian flag.

Artists have the ability to reveal the hidden stories in the most everyday objects and in almost invisible details. Thus, Clàudia Pagès represents Catalonia and the Balearic Islands at the 61st Venice Art Biennale with Paper tears, a macro-installation forged from 15th-century watermarks found at the Capellades Paper Mill Museum. Watermarks, also known as filigrees, are used to identify the maker of a paper and the person who commissioned it. Throughout history, some have been as simple as a cross, but others have been more elaborate, such as a coat of arms or images of real or fantastical animals. "I am not a historian; I use history during my research, and I make it my own through a mix of visual arts and writing," says Pagès, who is also the author of the novel Més de dues aigües (Empúries).

At the Venice Art Biennale, everything is quite for show: in each edition, almost a hundred countries from around the world proudly display their artists with the aim that, at least for a few days, politics does not overshadow the desire to shine internationally. But given the situation of international politics, with Russia, Israel, and the United States at war, this is still impossible. The 61st edition of the Biennale opened its doors to professionals this Tuesday and will open its doors to the public on Saturday, May 9th, with an edition on fire, and with the participation in the official section of Cuba, represented by Roberto Diago. So far, no signs of protest have been seen, but there is a call for a strike on Friday.

Lawyer Oriol Arau visited Salvador Puig i Antich in prison 69 times. The helplessness Puig suffered must have been terrible, but the visits Arau made to him during the five and a half months he was locked up in La Model until he was executed meant a lot. That is why, this Monday, one of Puig's sisters, Montse Puig Antich, and lawyer Magda Oranich were impressed when they saw him in Pere Portabella's film El sopar, during the third Campus Miró of the Fundació Joan Miró, which this year is dedicated to the Seqüències Portabella, coinciding with the filmmaker's centenary. That is to say, to analyze the political commitment of both creators and reveal "the invisible threads" between them. This first session focused on drawing a parallel between El sopar, which Portabella shot clandestinely with five political ex-convicts on the night of Puig Antich's execution, and Miró's triptych L'esperança del condemnat a mort, which he declared finished on the same day of the execution. "Apart from lawyer matters, Salvador and Oriol talked a lot about us. Salvador knew about us, not just when we went to see him, because we could say little, and instead, with Oriol we could talk," recalled Montse Puig Antich.

The UIA World Architecture Congress 2026 Barcelona will become, between June 28 and July 2, the global epicenter of architectural debate. The congress, titled Becoming. Architectures for a planet in transition, will bring together around 10,000 participants and 250 speakers in more than 100 sessions. Here are 10 emblematic works by some of its most anticipated architects and speakers.

The German painter and sculptor Georg Baselitz, known for his images of raw bodies and inverted landscapes, died this Thursday at the age of 88, according to reports from Reuters and his gallery, the French Thaddaeus Ropac. In recent years, Baselitz painted large canvases from his wheelchair and transported brushes and paints in a wheeled cart. “The most sensible thing, in my situation, would be to say: ‘I’ll stick to small formats’,” he declared to El País at 87, on the occasion of an exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts in Bilbao. “But, of course, I don’t do what is sensible. What is right for me is what is senseless.”

In the first room of the Sainsbury Wing of London's National Gallery, a crucified Christ is agonizing. It is Crucifixion (1627), the first documented commission by Francisco de Zurbarán (1598-1644). It is an intimate and, at the same time, striking image: the drama is above all conveyed by the impenetrable black background that surrounds the figure of Christ, depicted with a care and delicacy that humanize him. This painting caused a sensation when it was presented in Seville, at the Dominican convent of San Pablo el Real: two years later, the Seville City Council invited the artist to establish himself in the city without having to pass the painters' guild examination. Now, this monumental painting opens the major exhibition that London's National Gallery is dedicating to Francisco de Zurbarán, the first in the United Kingdom, from May 2nd to August 23rd.

The model who opens the exhibition by French photographer Valérie Belin (Boulogne-Billancourt, 1964) at the Picasso Museum is an anonymous woman with a hairstyle reminiscent of the former editor of the American edition of Vogue, Anna Wintour. A woman who seems, at the same time, cold and sensual. But in this exhibition, nothing is as it seems, and when you get closer, you realize that the woman is, in reality, a mannequin. “It's from an old series, from 2003. At that time, I was interested in the appearance in cinema of somewhat fictitious characters, like Lara Croft [who came from a video game]. And, therefore, I was looking to create portraits of humanoids that were not people,” states Valérie Belin, who found the key to these works in the mannequins of designer Adel Rootstein, made with fragments modeled from real women.

Absolute success for the comedian and communicator Òscar Andreu this Sant Jordi with Manual de defensa del català (Univers): he started signing at the Plataforma per la Llengua stand and a queue of about a hundred people formed. The book was released on April 7th with an edition of 16,500 copies. At Plataforma per la Llengua, it has sold out. While a reader told him family stories related to learning Catalan, Andreu didn't look up from the book and continued signing non-stop. Impossible to talk to him. “I like his humor, and everything related to language interests me,” says a reader, Carles Vila. “Long live Catalan and long live Catalonia!” exclaim a couple, Miquel and Emma, while Òscar Andreu signs their copy.

The restoration of the chapel of Santa Escolástica in the monastery of Sant Cugat del Vallès has provided an exceptional surprise. After removing the baroque altarpiece for restoration, a mural painting of a Calvario, which can be dated to the mid-14th century, has come to light on the back wall. At the time of removing the altarpiece, the knees of Christ were revealed. Afterwards, the restorer Beatriz de Colmenares and her team continued to remove pieces of plaster until the figure of Christ was revealed and, on one side and the other, the figures of Saint John (on the right) and the holy women (on the left), among whom are the Virgin Mary, fainting, and Mary Magdalene lamenting.

The Department of Culture maintains its pace of acquisitions for the National Collection: after the record figure of 5.1 million in investment in 2023, this Monday the minister Sònia Hernández Almodóvar presented 636 acquisitions totaling 344,881 works for an amount of 4,891,744 euros. Furthermore, 232 works were also incorporated through donation and 58 through dation. In terms of price, the most expensive purchase is the Forvm Photography Collection (902,680 euros, while part of it was a donation), which arrived at the Museu d'Art Modern de Tarragona a few weeks ago. Next is the Book of Hours of the Gralla Family (320,000 euros), deposited at the Biblioteca de Catalunya.

"Imagine you have 4,000 puzzles of 1,000 pieces, you mix them all, you burn 90%, and then you try to reassemble them with the ones you have left." Santiago Alcolea, a Catalan art historian, describes with this image the work of medieval art historians. Knowing the author, the place of origin, or reconstructing an altarpiece from the surviving compartments can be a race full of obstacles.

The portfolio of the Mies van der Rohe Award once again delves into the service vocation of architects and their capacity to respond to the environmental and social challenges of the current world. The winner of this year's edition, announced this Thursday in Oulu (Finland), is the renovation of the Charleroi Exhibition Palace convention center (Belgium), by AgwA (Brussels) and Architecten Jan de Vylder Inge Vinck (Ghent). This involves the rehabilitation of a 1950s building with a limited budget, in line with the trend that interventions on existing buildings have a lower environmental impact than demolition and new construction. The rehabilitation of the Charleroi Exhibition Palace has prevailed over the rehabilitation of the old Vapor Cortès for Prodis, by the Vallesano studio Harquitectes.

The judge from Huesca has set a deadline of 56 weeks, just over a year, for the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya (MNAC) to return the murals from the chapter house of the Sijena monastery. The resolution, dated last Friday, has already been notified to the Aragonese and Catalan institutions, and was made public this Monday. The deadline expires on May 10, 2027. MNAC sources indicate that the museum will not make any statements about this resolution and that its lawyers will study it. The judge has set a deadline of five business days for them to file a motion for reconsideration, without interrupting the execution or the deadlines.

For Aurelia Muñoz (Barcelona, 1926-2011), art was like "a small miracle", as she herself said. “You don't know what's happening, but it's done. Even when you've been looking at it for a while, you say: «How did I do this?» You can't even explain it”, explained Muñoz, who would have turned a hundred years old this Monday. After decades in a certain oblivion –Catalonia is a country with a very short memory for its artists–, she returned to the forefront when the MoMA in New York bought three of her works in 2018. This fact consolidated her as one of the key figures of textile art in the second half of the 20th century and as a pioneer who expanded its limits with sculptures that transform the space where they are located and that propose a sensory experience.

The architectural transformation of Olot's old town is unstoppable. "There had been so many plans that the residents were tired and wanted action," says architect Eduard Callís, the founder with Guillem Moliner of the studio Un Parell d'Arquitectes. This studio is responsible for a major recent project, the Pla de places i placetes of Olot. This Saturday, Callís guided the public through these works during a visit organized by the Group of Architects for the Defense and Intervention in Architectural Heritage (AADIPA) of the College of Architects of Catalonia. The most recent of these works are the Jardins de la Muralla, the result of injecting life into "a kind of empty space" that emerged from the demolition of a residential building about twenty years ago. "There were only two rows of plane trees and a esplanade, and the residents were very interested in transforming the place into a garden, and in this garden connecting the city with the river," says the architect. The inauguration is scheduled for May 8.