Exhibition: «MAKO»

13/03/2026 | Barcelona | Activities > Fine Arts

This exhibition project that is organized Casa Asia At the Palau Robert, it pays tribute to the Japanese designer and ceramist Mako Artigas.

The “MAKO” exhibition brings together a representative selection of his work: drawings, textile designs and ceramic and porcelain pieces created over more than five decades.

The exhibition is complemented by a photographic archive and a documentary produced by Casa Asia Specifically for this project. The exhibition is curated by Ricard Bru, PhD in Art History and specialist in Japanese art, while Menene Gras Balaguer directs the project. It opens on Friday, March 13th, with the artist in attendance, and will be on display until the first week of June.

This retrospective of the Japanese artist based in Catalonia was first presented in 2024 at the Hispanic-Japanese Cultural Center of the University of Salamanca, later at the Royal Tapestry Factory in Madrid, and now arrives in Barcelona coinciding with the closing of the Catalonia-Japan Year.

Mako Artigas, profile 

Mako Artigas (Tokyo, 1937) was born in interwar Japan to, after the end of the Second World War, emigrate from his country of origin and integrate into the avant-garde and modern environments of the West. She arrived in Spain in 1960 where she met Joan Gardy Artigas, ceramist and sculptor, with whom she married and had two children. The world of textile design and printing was what Mako Artigas lived and breathed from a very young age, because both families, father and mother, had a centuries-old tradition in the field of the textile industry.

The artist distinguished herself as a textile designer in Paris during the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, while her regular stays in Gallifa, beginning in the 1980s, gradually drew her closer to the world of ceramics. Thus, textile design gave way to ceramics, resulting in more intimate pieces, from plates and bowls to artistic vases and jewelry brimming with colorful, natural, and botanical references.

The exhibition in Barcelona brings together a selection of these designs, along with works the artist has continued to create throughout her life. It also includes ceramic and porcelain pieces made at the Llorens Artigas Foundation in Gallifa, where she lives and continues to work actively.

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  • Opening: Friday, March 13 at 13.00 CET (admission by invitation only)

    From Friday, March 13th to Sunday, June 7th.
    Monday to Saturday: 9:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m.
    Sundays and public holidays: from 9:00 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.

  • Free admission

  • Casa Asia and the Palau Robert (Generalitat de Catalunya), with the collaboration of the J. Llorens Artigas Foundation, within the framework of Any Catalunya-Japó

  • Palau Robert
    Room 4. Garages
    Pg. de Gràcia, 107
    Barcelona

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