Twenty-six works of art from the Banco Sabadell Art Collection form part of the exhibition “Absences and presences. Charles Deering’s artists in the Banco Sabadell Art Collection”, organised by the Maricel Museum in Sitges. The exhibition, open to visitors until 25 October 2026, seeks to address the absence of work by Catalan and Spanish artists dating from the late 19th century to early 20th century, which once formed part of the Deering collection at the Maricel Museum, by highlighting the presence of works by those same artists drawn from the Banco Sabadell Art Collection.

The common thread running through this exhibition is the figure of Charles Deering, the North American industrialist, philanthropist and collector who had the Palau Maricel constructed as the setting for an ambitious collection of Hispanic art, featuring some of the great masters, including Goya, El Greco and Zurbarán. Back in the days when the Maricel complex served as the home of the Deering collection, the project played a decisive role in shaping a narrative of the heritage and art of Sitges and its cultural influence.

The current exhibition specifically seeks to fill the void left by absent artworks; it recovers and re-contextualises those artists that once formed part of the Charles Deering collection at Maricel using an external source of artworks, the Banco Sabadell Art Collection, bringing those artists back to grace the walls of the Maricel Museum once again. The exhibition features work by Ramon Casas, Mariano Andreu, Enric Casanovas, Oleguer Junyent, Joan Llaverias, Joaquim Mir, Joan Roig i Soler, Santiago Rusiñol, Eliseu Meifrèn, Arcadi Mas i Fondevila, Ricard Canals, Joaquim Sunyer and Hermenegildo Anglada-Camarasa, among others, all key figures in the Catalan modernist movement, whose work resurfaces in a space steeped in history and cultural significance. The “presence” of these artists is reinforced by an evocative background: the works seem to engage in dialogue with vintage images that reveal the splendour of the Maricel Palace. One of the exhibition’s main strengths is that it brings together three dimensions that are often kept separate: first, the local history (of Sitges and Maricel); second, the history of art collecting and collectors (including Deering, a significant figure in this regard); and third, the role of corporate collections, such as that of Banco Sabadell, which in this context provides artworks in order to re-open the cultural narrative and make it accessible in the present day.

On display at the Maricel Museum, the exhibition is an opportunity to reflect and re-evaluate: to take stock of what is present in order to better understand what is absent and, by doing so, to re-imagine Maricel as a living space replete with meaning, far beyond the picture postcard image of cultural heritage.