The MUN opens 'Around María Josefa Huarte. Collection Museo Universidad de Navarra', a new look at his collection

The Museo Universidad de Navarra opens this Wednesday Around María Josefa Huarte. Collection Museo Universidad de NavarraCollection, an exhibition that invites visitors to discover the Museum's collection with a new look, based on the pieces from the legacy of the Navarre-born 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 exhibition 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 exhibition and head of Collection and Exhibitions at Museo Universidad de Navarra, stressed during the presentation to the media that "the Museum's collection is a living, open collection, in which we are still adding works". Works by authors such as Jaime Burguillos, Manuel Gómez Raba and Jean Ipoustéguy, belonging to the María Josefa Huarte legacy, 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, made for the 1972 Pamplona Encounters.

The curator was accompanied by Jaime García del Barrio, director of 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 exhibition 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, now he has chosen "a dialectic presentation 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 exhibition there is a dialogue between fundamental works in the exploration of the wall such as Homage to Bach, by Jorge Oteiza, and Incendi d'amor, by Antoni Tàpies, the most predominant authors in the legacy of María Josefa Huarte, together with Pablo Palazuelo. From the latter artist can be seen works such as Omphale I or El número 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 about the keys to the exhibition, the curator will offer a masterclass this Wednesday at 7 p.m. in the Museum Theater. Admission is free until full capacity is reached after collecting an invitation.