Almeria,
Just a few days ago, the Museum of Contemporary Spanish Realism marked a month of existence, born at the initiative of the Ibáñez Cosentino Art Foundation and the Almería Provincial Council, with the impetus of the artist Andrés García Ibáñez and the support of Antonio López. Precisely from the collaboration between both painters, and with some private collectors, the meeting of the 260 works that make up the permanent collection of the center, located on the Paseo de San Luis in the capital of Almería, derives: they are mostly paintings, but also sculptures, drawings and some engravings, dated from the beginning of the last century to the present.
The headquarters of the Museum is the old Hospital of Santa María Magdalena, rehabilitated for the occasion by the Provincial Council, which holds ownership of this space and finances its activities. Asset of Cultural Interest, it is the only building from the 16th century that is preserved in Almería (it was founded by the Catholic Monarchs in 1492, but an earthquake forced it to be rebuilt in 1556) and so that it could house the MUREC, its structure has been consolidated and They have revalued its most notable elements, such as the sober north façade, its Mudejar coffered ceiling, of extraordinary size for a civil place, or the Villalán staircase. The surface of this construction is 3,000 square meters, distributed on two floors around a central patio, which has also been conditioned and will host musical, theater, dance or conference proposals; For these purposes there will also be a teaching room and a multipurpose and convention room, the latter located in a 19th century chapel. For those who visit the historic center of Almería, this center will not be far away: it is very close to the Cathedral, the Andalusian Center of Photography, the Alcazaba and the Almedina neighborhood.
There are eleven rooms that make up the tour of the permanent collections of the MUREC, on the ground floor and the first, and their arrangement follows criteria in which chronology and different techniques intersect: they are dedicated to Antonio López and Andrés García Ibáñez, the masters of between centuries, realism and modernism, symbolist regionalism and traditionalism, synthesis and realistic modernity, eclecticism and postwar modernity, Antonio López and the realists of Madrid, the orbit of those, their stele, young realism and the workshops of Olula del Río (where García Ibáñez and López have trained many new authors, some present here) and, finally, again to Antonio López, Francisco López, Julio López and sculpture.
Among the creators represented, we will meet Sorolla, Pinazo, Beruete, Muñoz Degrain, Emilio Sala, Antonio Fillol, Isidre Nonell, Joaquín Mir, Miguel Blay, López Mezquita, Ramón Casas, Mariano Benlliure, Zuloaga, Manuel Benedito, Mateo Inurria, Romero de Torres (of which the large canvas is exhibited Consecration of the coupletwhich was presented at the National Exhibition of Fine Arts of 1912), Gutiérrez Solana, Valentín de Zubiaurre, Rosario de Velasco (the Thyssen Museum is preparing a large exhibition of his for which a good number of works have been recovered), Daniel Vázquez Díaz , Rafael Zabaleta, Joaquim Sunyer, Ramón Gaya, Xavier Valls, García Donaire, Esperanza Parada, María Donaire, Isabel Quintanilla, Carmen Laffón, Amalia Avia, Joaquín Ramo, Enrique Gran, Lucio Muñoz, Cristóbal Toral, Luis Marsans, Mezquita Guñón, Clara Gangutia, Eduardo Naranjo, Félix de la Concha, Joseba Sánchez Zabaleta, Benito Prieto Coussent (whose entire legacy has been acquired by Andrés García Ibáñez), Gerardo Pita, Pepe Baena Nieto, Ignacio Estudillo, Cristina Megía, Rafel Bestard or Golucho.
Open from Tuesday to Sunday (this last day admission is free), this center's ultimate goal is to vindicate a style and artists, if not cornered, then often left aside compared to their abstract colleagues in the great contemporary art museums. and also at an institutional level – they have never lost the public's favor; also highlight the genuine Spanish contribution to this language, compared to the import of European or American avant-garde, and that, as García Ibáñez indicates and many compositions in this Museum prove, realism usually born of life.
