When I received an issue of the Cuadernos del Museo de Bellas Artes de Gravina last year, I found it to be a very well-produced magazine, containing some interesting articles by the professor José Ramón Giner (about the painter Javier Lorenzo) or the architect. Santiago Varela (on the architectural direction in the work of his relative Emilio Varela). Also the works of two experts of Alicante art, María José Gadea and María Gazabat, in which they left interesting pieces of Alicante art.
But the question immediately arose: Was there a need for a magazine with these features in Alicante? When we consider the second figure that emerged recently, this question was answered positively. The second issue of MUBAG Notebooks continues with the magnificent presentation that the first issue boasted: the translation into English of texts by experts on all subjects continues with a stimulating innovation for researchers; It is gorgeously illustrated and has an excellent team of collaborators on the topics it covers. This is the way to maintain an excellent category in such publications, which borders between high-level description and university essay.
The index, which was published in the second issue in December and presented at the Museum itself, offers us a very interesting framework in terms of attracting the topics to be discussed and the experts working on these issues. . Two special names stand out due to the events held by the Gravina Street Museum in 2023; The presence of Joaquín Sorolla and Emilio Varela. Various authors, usually experts on both painters, summarize the characteristics and impact on the viewer of the colorful paintings of the two Valencian and Alicante-born artists. Thus, well-known companies such as Pérez Rojas, Pons Moreno, Gadea or Gazabat come together with Sánchez Monllor or Balsalobre and introduce us to the life, works and periods of these two painters. We Alicanteans have little to say about Varela, as we have found ourselves on more than one occasion confronting his interesting pictorial output, even lamenting the economic sufferings he suffered throughout his artistic career. We bow before Sorolla’s work, which has been shown many times and is no less praised. I remember an interesting anecdote about a Valencian painter who was in charge of a presenter from the Musica’92 Program of the Generalitat Valenciana. One day, also in distant December, I received a phone call from Antonio Serrano de Haro, the Spanish ambassador in Stockholm, whom I had met a few years earlier as ambassador in Havana, where the Ministry of Culture was opening an exhibition. Miguel Hernández and I managed to sit in the Palace of the Spanish Viceroys, in a chair that no Spanish king had ever sat in during 500 years of colonial rule…
The exhibition was of interest to the Antillean government not only because of the exalted status of the Oriola poet, but also because Hernández was a friend of the deceased Cuban journalist Pablo de la Torriente Brau, who came to see the Spanish people in struggle. Miguel Hernández dedicated his second Folk Winds Requiem to his fellow warrior: “Pablo de la Torriente, you remain in Spain and in my fallen soul: The sun will never set on your brow, the mountain will inherit your height and your height.” encourage the roaring bull.
Returning to the telephone conversation with Serrano de Haro, he discussed the opening of an exhibition in Stockholm by two painters who were friends and had similar landscape characteristics, the Spaniard Joaquín Sorolla and the Swede Anders Zorn. water in motion”. The Spanish ambassador was excited to hear a musical band from Valencia at the opening ceremony at the National Museum in Stockholm, as the two monarchs will attend events that will later be held at the Sorolla Museum in Madrid, the first event in Sweden. Logically, we set to work, and on the chosen day, the string quartet Martín y Soler, named after the famous 18th-century Valencian composer, conducted by cellist María Mircheva, thrilled the participants, among whom you truly were one.
Good morning my baby. Returning to the second number of the MUBAG Notebooks, we would like to highlight a very excellent article by Professor Miguel Ángel Lozano, who with his detective intelligence and unquestionable literary mastery traces from Alcoy the work of Lorenzo Casanova, After the First. Steps that the painter’s wife gave to her nephew Gabriel Miró on the day of his marriage to Clemencia Maignon. This painting, which is now part of the MUBAG collection, was followed in all the cities where the famous writer from Alicante lived, Alicante, Barcelona and Madrid, where he died in 1930.
From this interesting second part of the annual MUBAG Notebooks, a Christmas gift from the Museum, directed by Jorge Soler, the extra dedicated to the “Dematerialisation of contemporary sculpture in Alicante”, featuring artists such as Bañuls, Lastres, Adriano, Gutiérrez Carbonell or Carrillo, among others as well as by excellent experts such as Román de la Calle or by professors and specialists: Sánchez Luna, Roche Cárcel (coordinator of the monograph), Díaz Sánchez, Gómez Moreno, Navarro Ferrón, Aramis López, Natalia Molinos, Pilar Escanero or Martín Noguerol. The place given by the person in charge of Arts and Letters among the authors of the texts evaluates us with Prussian determination and prevents us from mentioning them. And we are sorry.
In short, welcome to this new corporate publication that enriches our artistic panorama and helps us better understand the intense and effective work of our employees in the name of culture. For our culture.