'The Barcelonian' floods CASA SEAT with its covers

The Barcelonian are the covers of an imaginary weekly magazine that wants to pay tribute to the city that gives it its name with free illustrations that convey how the artists who outline them see it. Rereading old issues of The New Yorker during the pandemic, Luisa Vera began to draw how she saw a confined city, with masks and restrictions, and a lot of boredom, debuting in mid-June 2020. From there, it grew, adding more illustrators when Vera had already told everything.

"It started as a game," summarizes the founder of an artistic movement that has spread to other cities, especially Italian ones. With COVID increasingly assimilated, The Barcelonian began to open up to other themes, always giving creative freedom to illustrators to express their point of view and with the sole premise of having to talk about the Catalan capital, regardless of their style or whether they were veterans or novices. And without text, to vindicate the value of illustration on its own.

Three years later, the movement that Vera started has already held a couple of exhibitions, at Illa Diagonal and the Agustí Centelles Library, and has published its first book, collecting the first 102 fictitious covers, in addition to continuing to publish a new illustration weekly. Now, it premieres Ilustrando Barcelona, an exhibition at CASA SEAT, which will be on display until June 23. "It's one more step," said the founder of Factoría Cultural Martínez, Inés García-Albi, who joined The Barcelonian to support Vera.

CASA SEAT selected 30 artists from the more than 200 who are part of the community that illustrates The Barcelonian to create a cover that fit values such as culture, mobility, sustainability, technology, and innovation. Lhe works are exhibited on the three publicly accessible floors of the cultural space, with visiting hours from 10 in the morning to 8:30 at night from Monday to Saturday. Guided tours are also offered.

One of the covers exhibited at CASA SEAT is by DAQ, a pair of illustrators formed by Anna Miracle and David Acevedo, with a studio in El Raval. They see the city as a "great house of culture," paying homage to artists from pre-Olympic Barcelona with whom they grew up, "very gray, a little sad, but with a great desire to reinvent themselves and create culture from the margins." Among them are Miguel Gallardo, Gato Pérez, Brossa, Montalbán, and Miró.

Also among the selected artists is Perico Pastor, with his third cover for The Barcelonian. In it, two icons of the Catalan capital for the artist are seen: the Virgin of Mercè, which he likes because it seems to float, and Columbus. When he lived in New York and worked at The New York Times, they always asked him to represent Barcelona by drawing the Sagrada Família, but he preferred to do it with the monument to Columbus. First, because he doesn't like Gaudí's work and, second, because it is more difficult and requires more effort, while Columbus is only almost four lines.

The other authors included in the CASA SEAT exhibition are Àfrica Fanlo, Asis Percales, Carmen Segovia, Caro Monterrubio, Christian Inaraja, Cristina Losantos Sistach, El Marquès, Elsa Suárez, Gemma Terol, Giselfust, Jon McCormack, Jordi Bestiola, Jordi Vila Delclòs, José Luis Merino, La Casa de Carlota, Laia Domènech, Lluís Farré, Mari Fouz, María Hergueta, Martín Elfman, Martín Tognola, Max-o-matic, Miguel Bustos, Nadia Hafid, Patossa, Philip Stanton, Sandra Hernández and Sara Marcos.

All the pieces from Ilustrando Barcelona will be part of a competition to decide the artist who will design the cover of the CASA SEAT 2024 book, with a print run of 1,000 copies. The first selection will be made through CASA SEAT's Instagram account or physically so that visitors can vote for their favorite illustration. In the second phase, a specialized jury will select and announce the winner at the end of the exhibition.