ArtTraveler digests recent happenings affecting Spanish artists

In late December, a San Francisco, CA jury acquitted gallery owner Pasquale Lannetti, age 70, of fraud in a criminal trial claiming he knowingly misrepresented the sale of forged Joan Miro signatured works between 2001 and 2008.

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The exhibition of "Els salts artistics de Jacint Morera" continues until 9 January at the Centre Cultural of Terrassa.

Spanish designer Jaime Hayon designed part of the renovation of the newly opened Groninger Museum in the Netherlands.

To see a wide range of Joan Miro's works, go to the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya in Barcelona.

The Toledo Museum of Art recently added The Infant Christ, a wooden scullpture by Spanish 17th Century sculptor Juan Martinez Montanes (1568 - 1649) to its permanent collection.

Spanish artist  Ignacio Canales Aracil has created sculptures made out of a flower-press technique.

Blanchet and Associates auction house at the request of one of Picasso's relatives delayed auction of 143 pieces of Picasso's works produced between 1967 and 1973.

The Naples (Florida) Winter Wine Festival is going all out this year, importing for its fiesta the bronze sculpture entitled "Reina Mariana" created by Manolo Valdes. The festival: Jan 26 - Jan. 30.

In December, the University of Florida Museum installed a sculpture by the late Spanish artist Joan Miro, a 7,000-pound bronze work entitled, "Gothic Personaje."

CNN reported it ran its own survey on the world's most controversial artist. And it turned out to be Spaniard Santiago Sierra, who makes a habit of scandalizing his audiences, including transforming a former synagogue in Germany into a gas chamber.

Ex-pat Roger Noel Smith recalled his friendship with Spanish painter Jacint Morera, whom Smith calls a "contemporary of Salvador Dali whose critical reputation is slowly beginning to grow." Smith directs us to a bar called Amics de les Arts in Terrassa, less than an hour's train ride from Barcelona, to see two pictures he says totally blew him away.

In Europe's age of austerity, the pain is beginning to affect the arts. In December, about 40 artists in and around San Sebastian demanded that authorities intervene to halt the planned closure of the Chillida Leku Museum in Hernani.

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Stefan, the ArtTraveler(TM)