A commitment to the new art Journeys of the avant-garde in Catalonia through the Rafael and María Teresa Santos Torroella collection Temporary exhibition

Between the late 1920s and the early 1930s, various artists emerged on the Barcelona art scene whose work gathered around surrealism, a trend represented, beyond the great figures of Joan Miró and Salvador Dalí, by creators trained or active in different nuclei of Catalonia: Sitges (Jaume Sans, Artur Carbonell), Lleida (Leandre Cristòfol, Antoni Garcia Lamolla, Manuel Viola) and Girona (Remedios Varo, Àngel Planells, Esteban Francés, Joan Massanet).

Many of these artists would come together on the cultural revitalisation platform created by the ADLAN (Amics de l'Art Nou) association, founded in 1932 by Joan Prats, Josep Lluís Sert, Carles Sindreu and Joaquim Gomis. This group promoted various activities, such as meetings, publications, conferences and exhibitions. Surrealist figures and groups from Spain participated in some of these events, such as the Canarian core of Gaceta de Arte or the Madrid sculptor Ángel Ferrant, then a professor at La Llotja and teacher of Eudald Serra, Ramon Marinel·lo and Jaume Sans.

In addition, some Catalan creators close to magical realism, such as Ángeles Santos, at that time based between Valladolid and the capital, served as a bridge with Madrid's avant-garde art scene, establishing ties with intellectuals linked to the Generation of '27, the Residencia de Estudiantes, ultraism or The Literary Gazette and with painters such as Maruja Mallo or Norah Borges.