In 1934, already one of the most famous and sought-after painters of his time, Josep Maria Sert (Barcelona, 1875-1945) was commissioned to decorate the ballroom of the Venetian palace from his brother-in-law, Alexis Mdivani, at the time. Georgian prince who died a year later when his Rolls Royce crashed in Albons, in the Baix Empordà. Orphan of hosts and entertainment in Venice, the pictorial set consisting of seven canvases was then acquired by Prince Nicolas of Romania and, already in the fifties, it became the property of the Bank of Spain, which installed it in its Barcelona branch of Plaza of Catalonia.
Ballroom of Mdivani Palace in Venice with paintings by Sert
And there it has been since then, dismembered in different rooms, and practically hidden from the public. But his luck is about to change. Next week, the works will leave the building and when they return, in two years, they will be installed as Sert conceived for the Venetian palace, in a new room on the first floor with direct access for visitors.
The project
The set, now dismembered, will be displayed as it was conceived to decorate the ballroom
The creation of a Sert Room in Plaza de Catalunya responds to the Bank of Spain’s desire to make its rich artistic heritage fully accessible, points out the curator of the collection Yolanda Romero, who in recent years has worked on the preparation of the raison d’être where 1,400 of the more than 4,000 pieces that it hoards are reproduced. “The Sert outfit is one of his great jewels and also one of the most unknown,” adds Romero. The project will be carried out taking advantage of the remodeling works of the building, which will also undertake the cleaning of its façade, and aims to return the complex to its original state, “recreating that enveloping effect that as a good set designer Sert always sought” .
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The monumental canvases, the largest of which have dimensions of 7 x 3 meters, were conceived as a unitary and coherent whole. Sert himself, married to Roussie, the owner’s sister, was commissioned to install them in the Venetian palace located in a building near the church of Santa Maria della Salute, next to the Grand Canal.
A tragic ending
The mansion of the Georgian prince
Georgian Prince Alexis Mdivani (1905-1935) became famous for his lucky divorces. He first married Louise Astor van Alen and separated to marry Barbara Hutton, one of the richest women of the moment. With the divorce he made a fortune that allowed him to buy a mansion in Venice and ask Josep Maria Sert, married to his sister Roussie, to decorate it. Alexis was spending the summer of 1935 at Mas Juny, in Palamós, when he had an accident that cost him his life. He had invited his mistress Maud Thyssen (wife of the magnate and father of Baron Thyssen, married to Tita Cervera), when a call warned them of the husband’s return to Paris. He picked up his Rolls and flew materially over the road. She was killed when she hit a tree, and Maud was seriously injured, although she was able to recover. Josep Playà Maset
The living room had dimensions of 18 x 8 meters, and the set covered the four walls interrupted by a fireplace and several access doors. The group is known as Mediterranean Fantasies and each of the pieces was given a title (China or the East, Europe or Spain, Turkey or Istanbul, The Caucasus or Tartary…), “but they were not titles given by Sert, but posts a posteriori. There is no symbolic content or a specific story, they are landscapes and invented natures of Baroque inspiration in which characters of very diverse ethnic groups and origins appear, a Buddha, a magician, acrobats… ”, says Romero.
‘Turkey or Istanbul’ was located above the fireplace. At the top, children fly over a wizard in a red robe
After the acquisition by the Romanian prince, the set was shown in Spain in 1954 at the Museum of Modern Art in Madrid, where it aroused the interest of the architect and collector Juan Zavala, who would later recommend its acquisition for the Barcelona branch that he was planning and which opened the following year. The canvases arrived separately and were adapted to decorate the operations yard, where the two largest and the only ones visible to customers were installed, and the rest were distributed on the staircase and the meeting room. “At that time, it was tried to be Miquel Massot, Sert’s assistant, who would accommodate the fragments to the new space, but he lived in Paris, it was very complicated”, and finally, the project was entrusted to Ángel Macarrón, who had to supplement the fabrics , to adapt them to the spaces, and to Félix Alonso. In the case of the two in the operations yard, they were completed with floral ornamentation as frames by the painter Isabel Quintanilla.
‘Europe or Spain’, one of the largest fragments, was located in the operations room of the bank branch
While the building is being rehabilitated, the complex will be deposited in an air-conditioned warehouse and the restoration will be carried out in its new location, where the paintings will be freed from the additions and will adapt them to the architecture and dimensions for which they were intended.
The new museum space will have independent access from Plaza de Catalunya
The eventful history of the ensemble will then enter a stage in which it can finally be contemplated, not only by the public but also by specialists. The Sala or the Sert Room, which is how the new space will be called, will be preceded by a small interpretation center where its history will be explained. “We want to contribute to the study of Sert’s work,” Romero reasoned. He has been seen mainly as a set designer and surely that has weighed on his appreciation as an artist, it has played against him, but with the passage of time I think his work is going to be repositioned ”.
‘The Caucasus or Tartary’, where a group of acrobats takes center stage
Josep Maria Sert was one of the great Spanish muralists. From the Rockefeller Center or the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York to the decoration of the United Nations League in Geneva, he came to paint more than 7,000 square meters of palaces, halls, private residences and town halls, and made the Cathedral of Vic the reason for his life (it burned three days after the war began and did not cease until it was rebuilt in 1945, the year of his death).
Romero suggests that it would be interesting to create a Sert route in Barcelona, where the Hall of Lost Steps of the Palace of Justice, the Hall of Chronicles of the City Hall or the Sert Hall of the MNAC, coming from Sir Philip Sassoon’s mansion in London. The National Museum also preserves a study for the decoration of the ceiling of the Venetian palace that was never realized.
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