Art Noveau International Congress in the Historical Building

The president of the Scientific Committee of the coupDefouet International Congress is Teresa Montserrat Sala, professor at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Barcelona and director of the Research Group in History of Contemporary Art and Design (GRACMON). The Emeritus Professor of Art History Mireia Freixa is also participating.

In this fourth edition of the Congress, the topic is the new perspectives on Art Nouveau in relation to national identities (arts, society and thought). Special emphasis will also be put on the influences received and the mastery exercised by Domènech i Montaner around the world.

The Congress will be inaugurated on 29 June, at 12:00 noon, with a welcome address by the rector of the University, Joan Guàrdia, who will give way to the roundtable "Elies Rogent and Lluís Domènech, Founders of Modern Catalan Architecture", by the vice-rector of Heritage and Cultural Activities, Agustí Alcoberro. Other participants are Jordi Rogent i Albiol, architect; Elies Rogent, descendant of the architect of the Historic Building of the UB and first director of the Barcelona School of Architecture, and Lluís Domènech i Girbau, descendant of the architect and second director of the Barcelona School of Architecture, Lluís Domènech i Montaner. The session will be chaired by Professor Teresa Montserrat Sala.

Then,   13pm, will take place the inaugural conference of the Congress, named "National Identities in Europe around 1900", by Anne-Marie Thiesse, director of research at the National Center for Scientific Research of France. The conference, open to the public by reservation (modernisme@bcn.cat| 933 177 652), will be offered with simultaneous translation into Catalan.

The magazine coupDefouet of the Art Noveau European Route, an association of municipalities and local entities for the promotion and dissemination of Art Noveau heritage, began publication in 2003. Twenty years of uninterrupted publication, with two issues a year, have made it an indisputable model for the knowledge and dissemination of this artistic movement that defines some central concepts of contemporary Europe. After all, Art Noveau — or Modernism, Sezession, Jugendstil, Modern Style, Stile Liberty, Glasgow Style — was a cry for cosmopolitanism that at the same time recovered the oldest traditions, a paradox that has become one of the great riches of today's European utopia.

The Singularitats collection of UB Editions presents the results of the research developed by GRACMON, a research group of reference of the UB on Art Noveau (modernisme), Noucentisme, the history of design in Catalonia, and cultural studies and the arts in the city of Barcelona.