The Mashrabia Gallery of Contemporary Art presents its seventh collaboration with the Spanish artist Xavier Puigmartí, showcasing his very latest body of work under the title “The Garden”. 

Made mostly in the past, claustrophobic year at his home in the heart of Al-Fayyum Oasis, the 36 paintings on display draw inspiration from Puigmartí’s continuous observation of the surrounding, enchanted landscapes combined with a response to ancient Egyptian paintings and Juan Miro’s famous La Masia (The Farm), played a pivotal role in shaping his vision of the ideal garden. 

“In 2018, I exhibited a collection of paintings titled 'Landscapes' at Mashrabia Gallery,” Puigmartí said. “The paintings comprised desert landscapes in which men collected fossils and women played with celestial bodies. One woman, who was really an angel, told me, 'In the desert lie hidden gardens, seek them and paint them. Let’s see what you can do.'  I searched but found none, the gardens, beautiful and fragile, had vanished. Long after, I understood that those gardens lived only in my memory and in the history of painting, this was my only path to these lost paradises...”

The exhibition is on view until 24 March.  

*A version of this article appears in print in the 11 March, 2021 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly