A part of one of the most singular artistic collections in the province of Castellón is traveling this week from Vilafamés to Elche. At the Museu d’Art Contemporani Vicente Aguilera Cerni (MACVAC) opens Grammar of the Line, an exhibition that brings together works by figures such as Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Salvador Dalí, Marc Chagall, Antoni Tàpies, Dora Maar, Andy Warhol or Jean-Michel Basquiat, among others. The gesture is not accidental: it is the passage of an artistic treasure from a town to a city that welcomes it, but also an echo of what is disappearing in its place of origin.
In Castellón, the Cànem gallery has closed its doors after more than half a century of history. Pilar Dolz, its director, has announced the closure with a letter simply titled “Point and Apart”. It is not a definitive goodbye, but a closing of a stage. “The time for retirement has come”, she says, and although the announcement has caught many off guard, it is not an act of despair, but of maturity. The gallery, founded in December 1974, was a key space in the cultural evolution of the city, a refuge for artists, a bridge between collectors, critics and creators.
Cànem was not just a place to sell works. It was a workshop, a laboratory, a meeting space. For 50 years, Pilar’s workshop became a refuge for all those who dared to try their hand at engraving, from the most meticulous with a burin and copper iron to the clumsier ones who stained the irons with etching and aquatint. “We all passed through there, each of us with our own quirks,” recalls Vicent Carda. The gallery was born in the last years of the Franco regime, at a time when Castellón began to open up to new cultural concerns. Its first exhibitions included Andreu Alfaro in 1975 and Josep Renau after his return from exile in 1976.
The closure is not just the end of a gallery, but the closure of one of the last spaces dedicated continuously to contemporary art in the city. The 2008 economic crisis deeply altered the local collecting market, and the subscription system that used to work perfectly no longer could be sustained. Some collectors began to offer their works to the gallery to sell them, but the model did not withstand. Despite everything, Dolz does not speak of absolute disappearance. His engraving workshop “waits silently for new activity”, and promises that “in this castle we will continue to house the spirits, the books, the works, the memories”. The door is not completely closed.
The announcement resonates strongly because Cànem was more than a gallery: he was an actor in the cultural history of Castellón. His legacy is intertwined with the evolution of the city. The Universitat Jaume I awarded him an extraordinary distinction for his cultural commitment. Today, while a collection of great artists travels to Elche, a door closes in Castellón, but a window opens to what remains: memory, spirit, and the possibility that something new will emerge from what has been preserved.