Museu Apel·les Fenosa

The Apel·les Fenosa Museum, inaugurated on July 12, 2002, is located in a 16th-century Renaissance-style building, built on one of the gates that formed part of the walled enclosure of the town and is the oldest civil building in El Vendrell.

The building

The building was the summer home and workshop of the sculptor Apel·les Fenosa and the engraver and photographer Nicole Florensa, who acquired it in 1958. The premises of the Apel·les Fenosa Foundation preserve both the permanent collection and the different rooms where the Fenosa family and their friends, great intellectuals and artists of the time, spent the summers, which have been kept intact, as well as their garden.

The building is listed as a Cultural Asset of National Interest (BCIN). Throughout its history, it has been the residence of various families who owned the stately home, such as the Nin and Guimerà families, but it also served as a notary's office and a school at different times, reflecting the lives of its notable inhabitants. Its two exterior façades on Carrer Major and Carrer del Portal—the latter dedicated to Maria Anna Guimerà— are particularly noteworthy, as is the view from within the garden, where the imposing tower can be appreciated.

Collections

The collections include a selection of original sculptures in clay, plaster, and bronze, as well as explanations of the casting process. There is also a garden featuring large-scale sculptures, some of the artist's most outstanding works. Apel·les Fenosa produced a significant body of work comprising hundreds of sculptures of varying sizes, drawings, and prints. His sculptures evolved through several stages, from figurative to anthropomorphic, culminating in a personal abstraction of bodies and narratives.

Apel·les Fenosa was born in Barcelona in 1899 and settled in France in 1920 after fleeing military service. In Paris, the city where he lived for most of his life, he held his first exhibition in 1924 at the Galerie Percier, where the catalogue's foreword was written by Max Jacob. There he met and befriended renowned artists, writers, and intellectuals such as Picasso, one of his main collectors, Paul Éluard, Jean Cocteau, Tristan Tzara, Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, and others, many of whom also spent summers at his house in El Vendrell.

Fenosa exhibited individually or collectively in Paris, London, Barcelona, Madrid, Prague, New York, Tokyo, Osaka, Casablanca, Carrara, etc. and obtained important distinctions at the end of his life, such as the Gold Medals of the Generalitat of Catalonia and the City of Barcelona (1982 and 1987) and the Legion of Honour from the French Ministry of Culture (1983).