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A group of eighteen people, including students and teachers, from the Mislata Adult Education School visited the Miquel Navarro Foundation’s House-Workshop, in an activity organised in collaboration with Mislata Town Council.

The visit was guided by Miquel Navarro himself, who shared his experiences and artistic reflections during a tour of the facilities and during the screening of one of the films made by the Mislata sculptor.

The councillor for Culture and the Elderly, Pepi Luján, also accompanied the group during the meeting, which generated a close dialogue between generations, art and experience. 

Questions arose spontaneously: from the inspiration for the works to the technical details of the creative process, especially about the monumental sculptures such as Warriors for the battle or Placón, both made of marine aluminium and weighing several tons.

‘How can you melt this big thing?’ asked one of the attendees, to which the artist replied simply: ‘It’s not melted, it’s carved’.

Beyond the artistic content, the day was a shared learning experience and a discovery for these residents of Mislata, who were amazed that their municipality has an artistic space of this magnitude: ‘Everyone should know about this’, they said on several occasions.

With guided tours like this one, the Fundació Miquel Navarro, together with Mislata City Council, reaffirms its commitment to artistic education, the transmission of cultural heritage and the opening of its spaces to different audiences, making art a place of encounter, discovery and dialogue.

In collaboration with the City Council of Mislata, the Fundació Miquel Navarro received yesterday the students and teachers of the training cycle of Jewellery Technician of the IES Molí del Sol, located in the same Valencian municipality. 

The visit allowed the group to meet the artist Miquel Navarro first-hand, who accompanied them on an exclusive tour of the rooms of what will be the Foundation’s Museum-Workshop.

These future goldsmiths, who are currently in their first year of the training cycle, have carried out part of their practical work inspired by Valencian artists. Among them, the figure of Miquel Navarro has been especially significant, both for his artistic career and for his unique plastic language. 

For this reason, yesterday’s visit was an enriching experience: they were able to see the works commented on by the artist himself, thus establishing a valuable dialogue between generations.

During the meeting, they also learned about a lesser-known facet of the artist from Mislata: his foray into goldsmithing. From original terracotta models – currently in the Fundació’s collection – Navarro has developed various pieces that transfer his sculptural forms to the field of jewellery, while keeping his artistic imagery intact.

This type of initiative reinforces the Fundació Miquel Navarro’s commitment to artistic education and the dissemination of cultural heritage, opening its spaces to new generations of creators and encouraging the connection between contemporary art and technical training.

Yesterday, the ‘In short, Miquel Navarro’ film forum series began in Mislata, organised by the Miquel Navarro Foundation in collaboration with Mislata City Council, as a result of an agreement between the two institutions.

The cycle, which will end on 5 December, consists of four sessions in which short films made by Navarro are screened, followed by a discussion with the author, whose audiovisual work is less known to the general public, although it includes an important part of his plastic work. 

The aim of this activity is to promote and raise awareness of the life and work of Miquel Navarro among the different associations and educational groups in the town of Mislata, the artist’s home town and where his house-workshop is located.

The titles chosen for this cycle are ‘Strong as opium’, ‘Human territory’, ‘Eyes’ and ‘Where is my little dog?

The first session, aimed at the Espai Sènior La Fàbrica, was held at the Centre Sociocultural la Fábrica. The following screenings will be held for the Asociación de Mayores Voluntarios de Mislata, the Espai Sénior del Sud and the Espai Sénior El Quint.

On 29 October, the installation of three representative cities by Miquel Navarro was inaugurated at Mobility City in Zaragoza: “City 84-85”, from Miquel Navarro Foundation, “A city in your hands” (1998), from the Generalitat Valenciana, and “Fluid in the city” (2003), which comes from the IVAM (Institut Valencià d’Art Modern).

This installation forms part of the exhibition ‘Metropolis lunar’, curated by the art historian and patron of the Fundació Lola Durán and which has a double venue in the Fundación Ibercaja: the Museo Goya, where, from 3 October, almost forty pieces by the most universal artist of Mislata are on display; and the aforementioned building in the Aragonese capital, which was designed by the prestigious Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid for the International Exposition Zaragoza 2008. 

Under the metallic grids of the so-called ‘Zaha Hadid Bridge’, whose innovative steel and fibreglass structure is shaped like a gladiolus stretched over the river Ebro, visitors will be able to enjoy the three sculptural landscapes by Miquel Navarro, in a perfect fusion of art and avant-garde architecture, until 2 March 2025.

In addition, children will have the opportunity to interact with Navarro’s art, as one of the cities on display, ‘A city in your hands’, which is continually touring the world, has a playful character and its design allows children visiting the exhibition to play and interact with it to create their own city and thus modify the artist’s initial proposal. 

Photo: Ibercaja Foundation

Thirteen years after being named Favourite Son of Mislata, his city of birth and residence, the sculptor Miquel Navarro has received the distinction of Adopted Son of Valencia, in an institutional ceremony held on 7 October at the City Hall of the capital of Turia river.

This recognition has been awarded for ‘his national and international relevance and for having contributed to giving the city an image of its own’, taking into account that two of his public sculptures, The Parotet and the Pink Panther (originally, Public Fountain), have become icons for the third largest city in Spain, and that his work has been exhibited in the most important and prestigious museums in the world, such as the Guggenheim in New York, the Pompidou Centre in Paris, or the Lambert Foundation in Brussels’.

The president of the Fundació Miquel Navarro and mayor of Mislata, Carlos Fernández Bielsa, accompanied the sculptor to this ceremony of ‘Honors and Distinctions’, which was held as part of the celebrations for the 9th of October, the Day of the Comunitat Valenciana.

Refurbishment work has begun on the current workshop of the sculptor Miquel Navarro, which will be converted into a multi-purpose centre. In addition to being the headquarters of the Fundació Miquel Navarro, it will exhibit a large part of his work to the public and will host different cultural activities focused both on the dissemination of the figure of the Mislata artist and the promotion of art in general.

Work financed by Diputación de Valencia

The restoration project, designed by the Valencian studio Nebot Arquitectos and directed by Francisco Nebot, is financed by the Diputación de Valencia, through a direct subsidy of 676,000 euros.

Between now and the end of the year, the company IN-EX Construcción will carry out the work that will allow this project to materialise, which includes interior divisions, elimination of architectural barriers, construction of bathrooms, cladding, paving, lighting, installation of air conditioning and equipment, among other actions.

The future Miquel Navarro Museum in Mislata is beginning to take shape. The Museum Plan commissioned by the Miquel Navarro Foundation (MNF) and whose drafting has been completed this month, constitutes a roadmap that will allow the development of the project, guaranteeing its viability and social projection.

The document was drawn up jointly by the doctor in Art History David Gimilo Sanz and the Cultural Heritage technician and museographer Jaume Penalba Alarcón, who have approached the work as a preliminary study in which relevant aspects for the effective implementation of such a significant cultural project in the Valencian Community are dealt with in detail, taking into account the international recognition and projection of Miquel Navarro.

In this sense, the Museological Plan analyses, among other factors, the location and cultural context, the definition of the collections and their typology, the criteria for their conservation and restoration, the conditions of assembly, the management of visits, the menu of services, the programme of activities, human resources, the organisation of security and communication and dissemination.

The aim is to create a museum that not only exhibits and disseminates the work of Miquel Navarro, but also periodically includes temporary exhibitions by other artists and organises events aimed at promoting art from an educational perspective.

In the words of the authors of the study, “this will create a living museum, and not merely a passive container that could lead to a loss of interest on the part of the potential public”.

Prior to the drafting of the Museum Plan, the Miquel Navarro Foundation carried out an exhaustive work of cataloguing the museum’s collection, whose fitting-out work is expected to begin during the first half of next year.