Can Cassanyes

Can Cassanyes was a very big, three-storied house; the third floor was solely employed as personal library and studio of art critic, illustrator and publicist Magí Albert Cassanyes Mestre. He lived afar from the world, always cloistered in the second floor of his house, surrounded by books. He received a solid cultural formation and became a great connoisseur of the European avant-garde movements.

Paul Éluard visited Barcelona in January 1936. A group of young artists belonging to the surrealist movement gathered around the French poet’s figure and came to be known as the logicofobistes. They logicofobistes, very much influenced by Éluard and Dalí, proclaimed art as a revolution of the spirit and the rejection of all reason and logic and embraced irrationality in art as an element of freedom and modernity. These were years of great artistic creativity in Catalonia, nourished by the Noucentista movement; however, they were cut short by the outbreak of the civil war. Three of this group’s members were from Sitges: the art critic Cassanyes, painter and playwright Artur Carbonell, and the sculptor Jaume Sans.

In 1928, Cassanyes accepted the offer of a group of young people to use the space to open a cultural center, the Ateneu El Centaure. Years before, the gallery owner and art dealer, Josep Dalmau, opened a gallery in the street floor of Can Cassanyes.

In 1932 Cassanyes moved to Barcelona, where he would continue working in his artistic endeavors.

Can Cassanyes

Can Cassanyes was a very big, three-storied house; it opened to two streets: carrer Major, 44, and Àngel Vidal, 6. The third floor was solely employed as personal library and studio of art critic, illustrator and publicist Magí Albert Cassanyes Mestre (Sitges, 1893 – Barcelona, 1956). The ground floor was let to tenants, this being the Cassanyes' main source of income. Magí Albert Cassanyes received a solid cultural formation and became a great connoisseur of the European avant-garde movements.

Ramon Planes describes him in these words: "he stood out from the rest, starting with his physical appearance: he was big and robust, ungraceful, he always wore wide brimmed hats and a cravat: the look of a Modernist. I can't remember ever seeing him without a hat, he looked like a block of granite. He lived afar from the world, always cloistered in the second floor of his house, surrounded by books."

The Ateneu opened its doors to the avant-garde artists in 1928 and, in clear parallelism with the Seven Against Thebes, seven artists gathered democratically to bring aesthetic revolution to Sitges and called themselves "Els set davant el Centaure" (The seven before the Centaur). The seven members were: M.A. Cassanyes; his mentor, Josep Carbonell; Carbonell's friend, J.V. Foix; Carbonell's brother in law, Lluís Montanyà; Montanyà brought Sebastià Gasch and he, in turn, brought Salvador Dalí; and there was also Sánchez Juan.

On that very same year they organized La Primera Festa del Llibre (The 1st Book Festival) to a raving success. It had taken them more than two years to organize it since no existing association was interested in their proposal.