Escola Massana Centre d'Art i Disseny

Escola Massana has been up and running since 1929. For 86 years, it was located in the historic building of what was once Santa Creu Hospital until it relocated to a building on Plaça de la Gardunya in 2015. Its new site is at the heart of the Raval district, a dynamic, multi-faceted backdrop that helps understand the co-existence of various realities.
 
It is an arts and crafts school that was set up with the intention of improving the techniques and sensitivity of craftspeople. The School’s Jewellery Department was opened at the end of the 1950s. Its first head was the painter and jeweller Manel Capdevila, who taught jewellery in an open classroom, where all sorts of new ideas and materials were encouraged to boost personal expression over all conventional ways of thinking.   
From 1979, the art jeweller Ramón Puig Cuyàs took over as head of the Department. He taught theory and practice there for 35 years in his inimitable style that marked the School’s art jewellery to become an international landmark in contemporary jewellery.
 
Drawing from this legacy, the jewellery taught at Escola Massana prioritises encouraging creative processes inherent to this art form by spurring students on into discovering and establishing their own language through experimentation using a wide range of materials and techniques whilst expressing their thoughts to pave the way towards their conceptual insights.
 
This process comes out of an intimate dialogue based on the need for personal expression, but that teaches students to take it one step further and put it in the context of what they see around them, as well as to go beyond their personal and purely anecdotal musings.

The underlying principle of the School’s Jewellery Department falls within the bounds of jewellery that upholds the idea of a piece as a concept by breaking down the elements that arise from the dialogue between the hands and materials, ideas and the final output. This is a personal process that connects the creator with the object. It is held to be an act of introspection and cultural dialogue in which a piece of jewellery is not only an embellishment but also becomes a means of expression that puts across values and emotions beyond its physical presence to move into the world of the senses. Students are taught to reflect on and challenge what values jewellery could now have by breaking away from social conventions and broadening the horizons of jewellery.

They are also provided with tools that, although an integral part of the business environment, serve to redefine the rules of the market. They help them to set themselves apart from the context by being true to themselves, what they hold to be personal and their conceptual understanding so that they can make jewellery in which both technique and the message stand out.

Every student who has studied at the School has found diverse narratives in terms of what is formal and/or conceptual. Some have had a clear mission to be ground-breaking, others have redefined tradition and others still have explored other disciplines so that they have a cross-cutting creative capacity that enriches artistic processes in the applied arts, such as pottery, drawing and glass-making. Some of these processes are intended to have a social impact and others to incite an intimate dialogue loaded with universal questions.


Higher Degree in Visual Arts and Design for Artistic Jewellery
The Art Jewellery Higher Training Cycle lasts for two years. The two core subjects are Workshop and Projects. The two are closely linked to reflection and meaning in order to reach a concept.
There are secondary subjects that feed into the learning process: traditional drawing, technical drawing, 3D modelling and printing, history and thought, and vocational guidance.
Chasing, enamelling and Japanese lacquerware are taught, age-old techniques to which the students constantly bring new meaning in the framework of contemporary art. Learning these traditional techniques is not at odds with learning more modern ones (3D modelling and printing), which also have their place in the course.
After completing these two years, students come out prepared to carry out research work based on the dialogue between materials and thoughts through a wide range of creative resources.

https://www.escolamassana.cat/en/higher-diploma-in-visual-arts-and-design-for-artistic-jewellery_9468

 
Degree in Art and Design
The Degree in Arts and Design integrates three disciplines into a single degree: applied arts, visual arts and design, training versatile and adaptable professionals who can intervene in creative processes of a very diverse nature. This degree lasts 4 years and is committed to transdisciplinarity as a research and creation methodology. Supported by a broad base of contemporary theoretical knowledge, students integrate and hybridize knowledge and techniques from various creative disciplines in order to be able to create, communicate and understand complex realities in an integrated way.

The jewelery department within the Degree is within the area of ​​applied arts languages. The jewelry department of the Degree is conceived as a space for experimentation and research of personal language through the materials and techniques specific to jewelry, while at the same time betting on hybridization with other materials and disciplines, as well as promoting innovation in aspects material, technical, narrative and communicative aspects of jewelery and its context.

https://www.escolamassana.cat/en/presentation_21621


The Postgraduate Degree in Contemporary Applied Arts taught by Escola Massana and the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB)
The jewellery workshop taken on the Postgraduate course in applied arts lasts for one year and also covers theory classes. Work is also done on the primal concept of jewellery by freeing it from its utilitarian and speculative facets to take it to a more profound level and challenge the conventional perception of jewellery as a luxury item through a more ethical, reflective focus on its social impact. Pieces of jewellery become transformed into poetic narratives that reflect abstract and conceptual ideas so that they act as a bridge between creators and users.
The starting point is the body and its relationship with an object, from which artistic ideas are built up based on research and experimentation with materials to uncover aspects, structures and processes, which open the mind to other formal perspectives. Having direct contact with the subject, learning how to read and interpret materials, and entering into a dialogue between what can be done with them and what one would like to do with them are also considered important as this is a basic concept used in craft.
The aim of this process is to consolidate a style. Seeking a personal language is considered essential, as it helps students to establish mechanisms for working on projects in the future that reflect their identity, whether from an artistic or commercial point of view.

 https://www.escolamassana.cat/en/postgraduate-in-contemporary-applied-arts_21626


Teachers

Cycle
Carmen Amador.
Maria Diez.
Mireia Estopà.
Ester Madurga.
Elisabet Puig.

Degree in Art and Design
Maria Caballero.

Postgraduate Course
Grego Garcia.


International information
https://www.escolamassana.cat/en/international_2883
Scolarship
https://www.escolamassana.cat/en/search-results_12701?q=+scholarship