Milicià ferit: el rescat d'una obra insalvable

The Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya presents Milicià ferit, an exhibition centring on the painting by Francisco Mateos.

The Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya hosts exhibitions and cultural activities in Barcelona. On this occasion, the cultural centre is displaying a piece of propaganda painting created to denounce the harshness of the Civil War and exalt fraternity among soldiers, conceived in a context of urgency using precarious means and reused materials.

The visitor embarks on a journey where Francisco Mateos's original work can be seen, presented at an angle and under constant observation due to its irreversible and progressive deterioration. The exhibition explains how the author joined two paintings to form a larger canvas and how the poverty of the materials has caused chemical reactions and the continuous flaking of the paint, making its material recovery impossible without resorting to invention. To compensate for this loss of the original reading, the installation incorporates images generated by artificial intelligence that recreate its original appearance, in order to restore the expressive force of the initial message. The proposal is aimed at visitors interested in art, history and heritage conservation processes.