Concha Sempere Juan, sister and lifelong collaborator of the painter and sculptor Onyl Sempere, joined the long line of artists who shaped a regional cultural voice. Her passing this Sunday marks the end of an era for a family deeply entwined with the arts, as she lived to celebrate and sustain the legacy of Eusebio Sempere, a figure whose influence stretched beyond Onil to national memory. The town’s former mayor, Humi Guill, has shared tributes across social networks, highlighting Concha as a steadfast supporter of her brother’s work and a guardian of the family’s artistic heritage during her two terms of public service. The death arrived on the centennial anniversary of Eusebio’s birth, a coincidence that the Generalitat acknowledged by reaffirming its commitment to remember and promote his enduring influence.
Concha Sempere kept a lifelong closeness with her elder brother, a bond that shaped both their personal lives and their shared commitment to the arts. She remained a tireless advocate for the preservation of the Sempere family legacy, believing that the cultural contributions of Eusebio and his circle deserved ongoing attention. Her character — vital, resolute, and generous — pushed others to sustain artistic projects even during difficult times. The family’s public profile gradually broadened as Concha participated in exhibitions and scholarly discussions that invited new audiences to discover the breadth of Eusebio’s work and the era that nurtured it.
In 2015, Concha Sempere was noted as a 94-year-old elder whose presence continued to enliven discussions around her brother’s canon. She and her daughter Irene Mira were part of a broader program that celebrated Eusebio’s legacy through public encounters, including lectures and guided analyses. At venues such as the Gravina Museum of Fine Arts in Alicante, discussions explored Sempere’s drawings and sculptures, offering new interpretations of his career and inviting poetry readings that resonated with the artist’s own multidisciplinary sensibilities. Generations of visitors considered her a living bridge to the history she helped shape, and many recalled her energetic advocacy for scholarly and public engagement with his work.
More recently, in 2018, Concha Sempere participated in a major retrospective devoted to the Onil-born artist, staged at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid. This event, among the most high-profile recognitions of the Sempere family’s contribution to Spanish art, served as a capstone for a life devoted to preserving and interpreting a regional narrative with national significance. The exhibition drew attention to Eusebio’s early paintings, his experiments with form, and the ways in which his drawings and sculptures reflected broader cultural currents of the 20th century. In public discussions that accompanied the show, scholars described Sempere as a rare talent whose creative instincts bridged geometry, abstraction, and human emotion. The conversations also touched on Concha’s role in maintaining a living memory of those works, including her own recollections of childhood sketches and portraits that captured neighbors and scenes from Onil during the Civil War era.