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The first vice-president of the Diputació de València, Natalia Enguix, visited yesterday the facilities of the Miquel Navarro Foundation´s Workshop House in Mislata, after its recent refurbishment thanks to the financial support of the provincial council. 

Accompanied by the mayor of Mislata and president of the Foundation, Carlos Fernández Bielsa, the sculptor Miquel Navarro himself and members of the Foundation’s board of trustees, Enguix toured the different spaces that will soon be opened to the public as a museum-workshop.

During the visit, the vice-president had the opportunity to see first-hand the rooms that will house exhibitions of the artist’s work and that of other contemporary creators, as well as becoming the venue for artistic and cultural activities organised by the foundation itself.

‘Today, together with a reference and artist like Miquel Navarro, we seal a pact to make the Foundation shine in all its splendour’, wrote Natalia Enguix in the Mislata Book of Honour, reaffirming her commitment to the cultural development of the city.

For his part, Mayor Carlos Fernández Bielsa expressed his gratitude to the provincial council for ‘this involvement in making it possible for us to rehabilitate these important infrastructures so that in a very short time they can be opened to the public and so that Mislateros and Mislateras and people from abroad can get to know the life and work of Miquel Navarro’. 

‘For Mislata, Miquel is our most international artist. The fact that he has a foundation to show his life and work is very important for our city’, recalled Fernández Bielsa, who presented the vice-president of the Diputació with a silkscreen print by Miquel Navarro as a protocolary gift from the City Council.

Diputació de València has already allocated 676,000 euros to the renovation of the Workshop House, in addition to a contribution of 40,000 euros for its operation. In this new legislature, it is planned to complete the works with an additional investment of 100,000 euros, as well as to support the activity of the Foundation with 75,000 euros more.

Visibly moved, Miquel Navarro expressed his gratitude for the institutional support received: ‘I am happy, of course. The tenderness in my heart moves me’. His Workshop House is thus emerging as a new cultural centre of reference in the province, where heritage, art and the living memory of one of the most important sculptors on the contemporary Spanish scene come together.

Images: Mislata City Council

This month, work is nearing completion on the adaptation of the Mislata facilities that until now have been the main working space of the sculptor Miquel Navarro and which will soon become the Miquel Navarro Foundation’s Workshop House.

In addition to a sculpture workshop, this cultural centre will house temporary exhibitions, as well as educational activities and multidisciplinary proposals for all audiences.

The refurbishment project, financed by Diputación de Valencia with a budget of 676,000 euros, has been designed by the Valencian studio Nebot Arquitectos and is being carried out by the company IN-EX construcción.

The building, which was originally a former drugstore warehouse, has a usable area of 895.12 m² distributed over two floors, including entrances, showrooms, offices, storage and toilets.

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

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.

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.

Almost forty works by Miquel Navarro, some of which are part of the heritage of the Fundació Miquel Navarro of the Valencian Community, make up the exhibition ‘Lunar Metropolis’, which opened yesterday at the Goya Museum in Zaragoza and which can be visited until 22 December.

The symbolic duality between the spiritual and the earthly is the focus of this exhibition, which explores Navarro’s most personal universe since the 70s, through towers, moons, references to ancient cultures and universal concepts such as power, fragility and mystery.

In this sense, the curator of ‘Lunar Metropolis’, Lola Durán, highlights the presence of the moon as a ‘metaphor of the unattainable that illuminates the shadows of existence’.

As a whole, the exhibition, which includes some unpublished pieces, is a reflection on the existence of memory and the passing of time. It is also a reflection of the duality between the urban and the rural in Miquel Navarro’s life: from his childhood in Mislata, a town then surrounded by orchards, to the clearer influences of industrial growth with factories and trains. 

These contrasts in Navarro’s work ‘become dialogues between the intimate and the monumental, the ancestral and the contemporary, a dialogue between what is shown and what is hidden, and also between the earthly and the spiritual’.

The exhibition at the Goya Museum will be complemented by the exhibition of three mini-cities in the Mobility City space of the Ibercaja Foundation.

Photo: Goya Museum

Mislata Town Council continues to collaborate with Miquel Navarro Foundation of Comunitat Valenciana, with the aim of promoting knowledge and research in the cultural field, as well as to promote artistic events and activities in the sculptor’s hometown, where he currently lives and works.

Both entities have today signed a collaboration agreement whereby the council allocates a grant of 30,000 euros to the foundation, both for its maintenance costs and for carrying out a series of activities aimed at promoting and publicising the life and work of Miquel Navarro to the different associations and educational groups in Mislata.

These activities include the possibility of a series of guided tours of the renovation work and the adaptation of the headquarters of the Fundació Miquel Navarro, a monitored tour of the public sculptures that the artist has installed in the municipality, and a projection-colloquium of the artist’s audiovisual production in any municipal facility intended for cultural use.

In addition, the foundation undertakes to temporarily lend works by Miquel Navarro to those events organised by Mislata Town Council related to the Visual Arts, in which their exhibition is considered appropriate.

Last March, works began on the adaptation of the sculptor Miquel Navarro´s workshop in Mislata, in order to house the centre-foundation where his artistic legacy will be exhibited and disseminated.

The architectural project has been designed by the Valencian studio Nebot Arquitectos and the execution is being carried out in coordination with the Board of the Miquel Navarro Foundation and the authors of the Museum Plan, David Gimilio Sanz and Jaume Penalba Alarcón.

The works, financed by Diputación de Valencia with a grant of 676,000 euros, will continue throughout the summer and are scheduled for completion in October.

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.

The cycle of guided visits to Miquel Navarro’s workshop in Mislata, which began on November 23, continues this month.

The group of neighbors received today by the sculptor to show them his work space and part of his internationally recognized work come from the plastic arts workshops of the Department of Culture of the Mislata City Council.

This council collaborates with the Fundació Miquel Navarro in the organization of the visits, which not only contributes to fulfilling the objective of promoting knowledge of the work and figure of the famous mislatero artist, but also promotes citizen participation in the foundation project.

Precisely, Miquel Navarro’s workshop, located in the old town of Mislata, will soon be adapted to become a museum, where the more than 500 works donated by the artist to his foundation will be exhibited and various related educational and educational activities will be scheduled. with artistic creation.

The Fundació Miquel Navarro of the Valencian Community has started activities for the public today with the first of a series of guided tours of the sculptor’s workshop, which will take place during these last months of the year.

The objective of these visits, organized by the foundation in collaboration with the Mislata City Council, is that the residents of the town can see the facilities in the Morería neighborhood where its most universal artist works and which will soon be adapted to become a museum .

In this spacious warehouse, which was formerly a drugstore warehouse with art deco reminiscences and which houses a Civil War shelter in its basement, there is currently part of the work donated by Miquel Navarro to the foundation he created in 2020, as well as various tools that the artist usually uses in his creative processes.

The group that has started this cycle of visits is made up of older people from the painting and drawing workshop of the El Sur de Mislata Municipal Home, who have been accompanied on the educational tour by Miquel Navarro himself and by the vice mayor of Mislata and member of the Board of Trustees of the foundation, María Luisa Martínez Mora.

(11-14-2023) The Valencian town of Mislata, Miquel Navarro’s hometown, yesterday hosted the filming of the short documentary film “Fundació Miquel Navarro: origin and destiny of a universal work.”

This audiovisual piece, based on the idea of ​​the local roots of a work that has traveled halfway around the world, will serve as a public presentation letter for the foundation’s project, which was created in 2020 to protect the artistic heritage of Miquel Navarro and promote knowledge of his figure and his work, which has helped to internationalize the culture of the Valencian Community.

The Valencian production company NoSoloClips was in charge of the filming, which includes the testimonies of Miquel Navarro himself and Carlos Fernández Bielsa, president of the Foundation’s Board of Trustees in his capacity as mayor of Mislata.

The locations chosen were the sculptor’s workshop in the Morería neighborhood, the Mislata City Council facilities in the La Fábrica complex and different public spaces in the municipality that have some monumental work by Miquel Navarro, such as “L’Almassil” or “Walker”.

The same production company will carry out the final montage, which can be seen soon on the foundation’s website fundaciomiquelnavarro.es.

This week, the Miquel Navarro Foundation opened its social profiles on LinkedIn , Instagram and Facebook .

Through these social networks, the foundation aims to reach all segments of its target audience by creating a community made up, mainly, of people from inside and outside the Valencian Community who are interested in the world of art and culture, as well as as well as by professionals in the sector.

Apart from reporting on the progress of the Fundació Miquel Navarro project and its activities, the content that will be published in these profiles aims to promote knowledge of the extensive work and the figure of the Mislatero sculptor – National Prize for Plastic Arts – and, at the same time, carry out pedagogical work around contemporary art.

On 6 July, the Governing Board of the Diputación de Valencia approved the award of a direct grant to the Fundació Miquel Navarro for the restoration of the workshop house in Mislata which, until now, had been the sculptor’s workspace.

This aid, amounting to 676,000 euros, is crucial to advance in our project to create a multi-purpose cultural centre that will preserve a large part of Miquel Navarro’s artistic legacy and, at the same time, contribute to disseminating his figure and promoting knowledge of art through different activities open to the public.

The foundation’s board of trustees will soon be deciding on the commissioning of the basic project, execution and project management, with the aim of starting work between the end of this year and the beginning of 2024.