Mur al descobert

More than a century ago, the Romanesque paintings in the apse of the church of Santa Maria de Mur (Pallars Jussà) were torn up and sold in the United States, from where they have never returned. This event was a turning point in the preservation and protection of art in Catalonia, since, to avoid more cases like Mur's, the Government of the time ordered the removal of the rest of the Romanesque wall paintings of the Pyrenees and other areas of the territory and deposited them in the current National Art Museum of Catalonia (MNAC). Open wall narrates the events of the rediscovery of the paintings and their removal and subsequent sale. All by the hand of ten of its protagonists: four scientific hikers, one of them the architect Lluís Domènech i Montaner; the president of the Commonwealth, Enric Prat de la Riba; the collector Lluís Plandiura i Pou; Josep Farràs i Serradell, the priest who sold the paintings; the Steffanoni, the Italians who made the boot; Arthur Fairbanks, the then director of the Boston Museum; and Joaquim Folch y Torres, who started the rescue campaign.