Spanish’s Neus Penalba Curates Exhibition on Catalan Novelist Mercè Rodoreda

Rodoreda, a Forest, an exhibition curated by Assistant Professor of Spanish Neus Penalba, opened on December 5, 2025, at The Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB). In April 2024, Penalba was asked by the CCCB to curate the exhibition after the publishing of her book on the renowned Catalan novelist, Fam als ulls, Ciment a la boca. Una lectura de "La mort i la primavera," de Mercè Rodoreda, which was named one of the year’s best Catalan books for 2024. 

Penalba’s book makes connections with Rodoreda’s posthumous novel, Death in Spring, with the primitivism of the pictorial avant-gardes in Europe during the second half of the twentieth century. The exhibition presented a unique opportunity to build on this work by examining Rodoreda's entire body of work and present recurring themes visually, "The challenge was immense — to visually translate the radical nature of her entire literary output and to design a path for visitors through the themes that recur most often in her work," she explains of her first experience with art curation, "I envisioned a forest of symbols, because botanical tropes appear frequently in her writing and carry different meanings: the experience of war, the uprootedness of exile, desire, motherhood, and metaphysics."

Since arriving at Bryn Mawr in Fall 2024, Penalba had been working remotely on bringing the exhibition to life and spent summer break working in-person in Barcelona. "I have written all the wall texts, coordinated the catalogue, overseen the loan of artworks with various museums across Europe, written the script for an audiovisual piece on Rodoreda’s cinephilia, and more," shares Penalba.

Through plastic and audiovisual pieces from artists of different periods, as well as original documents from the Mercè Rodoreda Foundation and photographs and contemporary works by artists inspired by her literature, the nearly 14,000 square foot exhibition presents 400 pieces of art, including works by Gopya, Picasso, Leonora Carrington, Tàpies, Marc Chagall, Suzanne Valadon, Leonor Fini, Dubuffet, Michaux, Pina Bausch, Paula Rego, Francesca Woodman, and others.

The exhibition is expected to draw 100,000 visitors in Barcelona, and potentially travel to other countries. "It is an honor for my work in the humanities to reach so many people. It has also allowed me to explore my intellectual creativity in a very different way," says Penabla.