Andorra Opens Posthumous Sergi Mas Exhibition of 37 Fira Concurs Posters

The Sala d'Exposicions del Govern d'Andorra inaugurated on Wednesday the exhibition "Sergi Mas. 40 anys dibuixant la Fira concurs de bestiar d'Andorra," a posthumous tribute bringing together nearly four decades of the artist's work for the livestock fair.

The opening was attended by Culture, Youth and Sports Minister Mònica Bonell and Environment, Agriculture and Livestock Minister Guillem Casal, along with relatives of the artist and people who worked with him during his career.

The show gathers 37 Fira Concurs posters Mas created since 1982, alongside sketches, original drawings and objects that reveal how he depicted the country's landscapes, trades, farming life and traditions. Viewed together, the posters form more than a record of a livestock fair, offering a visual archive of a rural Andorra that has changed over time. The exhibition also highlights the nearly four-decade collaboration between Mas and Casimir Arajol in devising the posters.

Arajol was director of Agriculture when the Fira was revived in 1979, after a period in which it had not been held. That first edition bore little resemblance to today's event. "There were no prizes or anything, it was just a gathering of livestock," he recalls. Awards and other elements were added over the years, and in 1982 Arajol approached Mas to give the fair its image. A working method took shape from there: Arajol would prepare months in advance, gathering photographs, documents and ideas, and Mas would turn them into drawings. "I gave him the idea and he made the poster," Arajol summarises.

The route includes an audiovisual produced by Andorra Televisió with the Agriculture and Livestock department, featuring one of the last conversations between the two men, in which they describe in their own words how they worked together for decades.

At the inauguration, Bonell said Mas's posters form part of the collective imagination and stressed their contribution to preserving the country's historical memory. Casal defended the role of the Fira Concurs in conserving Andorra's agricultural and livestock heritage, and said part of Andorra's primary sector—and probably the Fira Concurs itself—could not be explained without Mas's work. He also noted that Mas's first poster, from 1982, coincided with the period when his grandfather was councillor for Agriculture and Natural Heritage, while the last arrives as he himself holds the ministerial portfolio.

Each edition of the fair also revives a utensil tied to popular culture or agricultural work. This year's choice is the sickle, or falç, traditionally associated with harvesting.

Mas died on 31 March. Arajol does not hide the impact of losing a collaborator and friend of decades, calling it "a very hard blow." The exhibition route ends with a work Mas began for the 2026 Fira Concurs, dedicated to the Incles valley, which he did not complete. It has been kept as he left it and stands as the final piece in the series begun in 1982. Its unfinished state makes the creative process unusually visible, showing the first lines, the landscape still to be developed and the different stages of the drawing.

The Fira Concurs is due to return next Tuesday, 27 October. For the first time in many years it will be held without a newly finished poster by Mas, though now surrounded by all the images he left along the way.