One century, one commitment, two collections

Valencia,

If we think about the artistic collection of the Bancaja Foundation, we will also do so very soon in Sorolla: the Valencian artist, his marine compositions and his Sad inheritance! They are the insignia of these funds, which we have gradually come to know in the exhibition halls of this institution and in the loans it grants. This painter, in any case, should not overshadow the richness of a collection that has works dated between the 15th and 21st centuries: almost 3,000 pieces by national and international authors, including paintings, sculptures, photographs and engravings, with another very notable presence: that of Picasso.

The ABANCA art collection, another of the fundamental funds in our country among those linked to banking entities, has been consolidating for thirty years and consists of nearly 1,400 works by more than two hundred authors, including paintings, sculptures, photographs, engravings, drawings and installations.

Destined from the beginning for permanence, knowledge and public dissemination, it gives, where appropriate, great prominence to Galician creators (Castelao, Laxeiro, Arturo Souto, Isaac Diaz Pardo, Luís Seoane, Urbano Lugrís, Maruja Mallo, Leopoldo Nóvoa or Francisco Leiro), but there is no shortage of great Spanish and international names: from Salvador Dalí to Picasso, including Max Ernst, George Braque, Manolo Millares, Antonio Saura, Eduardo Chillida, Cristina Iglesias, Juan Muñoz, Juliâo Sarmento, Sean Scully, Susana Solano or Miquel Barceló.

Commitment to art. From Miró to Barceló. Bancaja Foundation, 2026

ABANCA and Fundación Bancaja have joined forces to underline, in an exhibition that can be visited from today at the Valencian headquarters of the latter institution, the weight of their respective funds in the panorama of private collecting of contemporary art, in the homeland and beyond.

The exhibition “Commitment to art. From Miró to Barceló”, curated by Fernando Castro Flórez, presents a retrospective tour of the creation of the 20th and 21st centuries: the selected creations are dated between 1913 and 2023. This exhibition has already passed through Afundación, in A Coruña in 2025, but on the occasion of this itinerancy, the selected pieces have been renewed, which this time total almost ninety, in equitable distribution as to its two origins.

The artists represented exceed fifty, and among their works they have tried to propose aesthetic dialogues that are instructive for the public.

Picasso, Miró, Kandinsky, Georges Braque, Juan Gris, Paul Klee, Joaquín Torres García, Marc Chagall, Giorgio De Chirico, André Lhote and Jean Metzinger will give an account of the first Parisian emergence of the avant-garde and the many paths to the rupture that the beginning of the 20th century prepared; Antonio Saura, Rafael Canogar, Manolo Millares and Antoni Tàpies will be some of our informalist representatives at the exhibition; and Soledad Sevilla, Eusebio Sempere and José María Yturralde will be champions in the journey of geometry and its rigor.

The abstract artists in Valencia will be, among others, Sean Scully, José Manuel Broto, Antón Lamazares, José María Sicilia, Miguel Ángel Campano or Günther Förg; figuration and critical pop will come from the hands of Equipo Crónica, Luis Gordillo or Darío Villalba; and the rich and unclassifiable developments of painting in recent decades will be left to Anzo, Juan Barjola, Juan Navarro Baldeweg, Barceló, Miquel Navarro, Cristina Iglesias, Urbano Lugrís or Julian Opie.