The University Museum of Navarra opens this Wednesday Around María Josefa Huarte. Collection of the University Museum of Navarraa exhibition that invites you to discover with a new look the Museum's collection, based on the pieces of the bequest of the Navarre collector, donated in 2008. After a first presentation in 2015 and its passage through the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum in 2020, the new exhibition layout proposes a journey through four major areas: figuration, the wall as a space for creation, informalist abstraction and geometric abstraction.

It also allows for dialogue and interaction between different authors and works, as well as to contemplate pieces that had not been shown until now, some of them from new additions. The sample brings together 44 pieces of painting and sculpture of the nearly 25,000 that are part of the Museum's collection, consisting of photographs, video art, drawings, sculpture and painting. Ignacio Miguéliz, curator of the sample and manager of Collection and Exhibitions of the University of Navarra Museum, emphasized to the media at presentation that "the Museum's collection is a living, open collection, in which we are still adding works". Works by artists such as Jaime Burguillos, Manuel Gómez Raba and Jean Ipoustéguy, belonging to bequest María Josefa Huarte, can be seen for the first time; and new donations of pieces by Elena Asins, Manolo Millares, Tsuguharu Foujita and the work Espectador de Espectadores, by Equipo Crónica, created for the 1972 Pamplona Encounters.

The curator was accompanied by Jaime García del Barrio, director of the Museo Universidad de Navarra, who valued the figure of María Josefa Huarte: "Her donation is present in a different way, with different re-readings. And remembering María Josefa is a reason for joy. She wanted her works to be a seed for the collection to grow and open lines of work and research. This sample reflects that spirit, because she did not want a static collection, but one that would generate many more projects".

THEMATIC TOUR

Miguéliz also explained that, as opposed to the arrangement by authors of the initial proposal , he has now chosen "a dialecticpresentation in which the different works coexist and dialogue with each other, following four areas, dedicated to figuration, the wall as a space of creation, informalist abstraction and geometric abstraction. But, in reality, the location of each piece depends more on the link and the relationship it has with other similar works than on the ascription of that author to a single current. Besides, they are very polyhedral works". Likewise, this arrangement brings the visitor closer to "the history of contemporary art in the second half of the 20th century in Spain, since most of the pieces belong to this period". The exhibition proposal also proposes to explore "the configuration of the image and how it is received by the spectator".

In the sample dialogue fundamental works in the exploration of the wall as Homage to Bach, by Jorge Oteiza, and Incendi d'amor, by Antoni Tàpies, authors more predominant in the bequest of Maria Josefa Huarte, along with Pablo Palazuelo. From the latter artist can be seen works such as Omphale I or El issue y las aguas I, in interaction with Música de las Esferas II, by Eduardo Chillida, or Rodchenko Rojo, by Manu Muniategiandikoetxea, among other pieces inscribed in geometric abstraction. The exhibition also brings together works by Mark Rothko, Pablo Picasso, José Antonio Sistiaga, Rafael Luis Balerdi and Luis Gordillo, among other artists.

To learn the keys to the exhibition, the curator will offer a masterclass, this Wednesday, at 7 p.m., in the Museum Theater. entrance free until fill in capacity upon withdrawal of invitation.