From March 25 to May 17, 2026

Opening: March 24 at 7:30 p.m.

To talk about Xavier Serra de Rivera (Sant Joan Despí, 1946) is to talk about a painter with capital letters. Not only for his proven excellence throughout his artistic work of more than sixty years, but also for the erudition that lies behind the works he has produced and that is evident when talking about art with him.

For Serra de Rivera, a portrait is not just the material representation of a moment of the model (whether a family member, friend, acquaintance or professional), there is a soul, which through brushes or pastels, he leaves frozen on canvas or paper. Speaking of this capturing of the moment, for him it must be an organic act that flows without obstacles to end up capturing the essence of the portrait. In the words of the painter, “if you start making adjustments to a painting to capture the essence, you are actually stopping painting and therefore it is better to leave it and start from scratch”.

That he is an artist with a very internalized nature and not permeable to fashions or market requirements, is clearly seen in this exhibition. Serra de Rivera continues to do what he likes most, this being the reason that his creation avoids materializing in works that need explanations to show a meaning or be understood. In his case, they already speak for themselves and
They give the recipient of these compositions and colors the pleasant sensation of understanding and enjoying what they are seeing. A figuration that goes beyond the mimesis of the
reality, because it contains the feeling that the artist has perceived when creating the work.

This exhibition, surrounded by Can Negre, one of the magnificent modernist architectures that Josep Maria Jujol i Gibert created in Sant Joan Despí, allows us to take a tour of his artistic career. However, as if we were personifying his character with the hat who walks through the Parisian park in the work Dans l’allée de la Duchesse , we do so surrounded by his works.

In his dreamlike stage we find birds of impossible sizes that observe us or converse in fantastic dialogues. Engravings that oscillate from chimerical situations to more realistic scenarios. And his longest period where views of Barcelona, ​​portraits and a couple of self-portraits (few, if we consider the large number he has made over the years), take us into his
creative world. Among the portraits, whether of family, friends or models, we often find looks that seek our complicity to start a dialogue, which in some cases can be intimidating, since the strength that the dolls have is striking.

Connoisseurs of the work may miss his well-known still lifes of pomegranates, apples, flowers or cups, although we do find compositions that could be placed in the same drawer. If we except an apple, a pile of rice and a garlic, the rest are inorganic objects that shy away from the typical still life compositions, as we conceive them. Among these object works, we find a fallen angel that, however, seems to be a replica of the angel that Jujol placed on the ceiling of the stairs of Can Negre. As if they were opposites, we find an angel in the ascension imagined by the architect and a fallen angel represented by the painter. Good and evil in eternal struggle.

An artist’s studio, which in this exhibition we can perceive in a biased way in different works, is always a magical place for those of us who are lucky enough to be invited to such an intimate space but at the same time so willing to receive you. It is where the inert materials that are pigments and supports, become, thanks to the imagination and trace of the painter, an expression that goes far beyond a material combination. It ends up freezing a fleeting moment, in a perennial presence.

I hope that this tour of Xavier Serra de Rivera’s work in Sant Joan Despí, a town now a city, where he was born almost eighty years ago, inspires you as much as it inspired us to devise it for you to contemplate.

Jaume González Cuadrat
Curatorship