The Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB) presents the exhibition 'Rodoreda, un bosque', offering a fresh and exhaustive look at the work of Mercè Rodoreda, the most important Catalan writer of the 20th century. The show challenges the stereotypes of sentimentality and kitsch attributed to the author, highlighting her radicalism and contemporaneity. Curated by Neus Penalba, the exhibition dialogues with 400 artworks and will be on view until May 25, 2026.
Mercè Rodoreda (Barcelona, 1908-Girona, 1983) is the most translated Catalan-language writer, available in forty languages. The exhibition 'Rodoreda, un bosque', curated by essayist and literary critic Neus Penalba, shakes off traditional prejudices to reveal an author who is "innocent and cruel, childish and macabre, realistic and fantastic", according to Penalba. Judit Carrera, director of the CCCB, praised her "brilliant view of Rodoreda" during the presentation.
It is not a biographical show, but an immersion in her texts and imaginary, organized into six thematic areas: innocence, desire, war, Barcelona houses, metamorphosis, and the soul. Each quote from Rodoreda relates to works by artists such as Suzanne Valadon, Fina Miralles, Ramon Casas, Marc Chagall, Remedios Varo, Leonora Carrington, Picasso, Dora Maar, Man Ray, Laia Abril, Alice Rohrwacher, or Josefa Torres, among the 400 included.
A standout example is a quote from Quanta, quanta guerra, where the protagonist plants himself in the earth to become a tree, dialoguing with Fina Miralles' photograph Mujer-Árbol (1973). Penalba criticizes the film adaptation of La plaça del diamant (1982), directed by Francesc Betriu and starring Sílvia Munt, for portraying Colometa as excessively candid, far from the original's grotesque nuances. "She never wrote autofiction", she specified, and denounces machismo in academia.
The exhibition claims the concept of "forest" over the naive garden, showing how nature in Rodoreda is beautiful and poisonous, as in La mort i la primavera or Mirall trencat. Works like Aloma and Jardí vora el mar already reveal her early darkness. For the show, five new creations were commissioned from Catalan artists: Oriol Vilapuig with a mural inspired by La mort i la primavera; Mar Arza with paper and cement sculptures; Èlia Llach with a space of darkness based on a letter from Rodoreda to Anna Murià; Cabosanroque with a hallway on war and exile; and Carlota Subirós with El tiempo dentro de mí, about actresses who played Natalia in La plaça del diamant.
Penalba uses the forest as an allegory for Rodoreda's literature: it grows, intertwines, and regrows, sheltering complex worlds.