- Artist
- Joaquim Gomis and others
- Dates
- —
The exhibition Broken Games is a selection of 13 photographs by different authors: some were taken by Joaquim Gomis' father, others by Joaquim Gomis (1902-1991) himself, and one by Gomis' wife, Odette Cherbonnier. What prompted this exhibition was a desire to present materials from the family albums in the Gomis Archive held at the National Archive of Catalonia, which evoke summertime joie de vivre as well as fun vacation and leisure time.
The selected photographs show festive traditions and dances, beach scenes, and a variety of sports practiced during the first three decades of the twentieth century. The last photograph, taken by Joaquim Gomis in 1936, is a bathing scene at Lake Lucerne in Switzerland, where the Gomis family was staying after fleeing the outbreak of the war in Spain. The exhibition thus ends with the sudden, unexpected, unwelcome interruption of those carefree, joyous years, drawing a parallel with the current situation of fear and distress brought on by the pandemic.
