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Diari Valencià

Mubag inaugurates intimate Emilio Varela exhibition with unreleased pieces

The exhibition, commemorating the 75th anniversary of the painter's death, displays thirty works, including portraits from his private collection.

Image of a warmly lit exhibition hall with artworks, mainly portraits, on display.
IA

Image of a warmly lit exhibition hall with artworks, mainly portraits, on display.

The Museum of Fine Arts of Alicante (Mubag) has joined the celebration of the Varela Year with an exhibition showcasing thirty pieces, many of them unreleased, from the private collection of his descendants.

The exhibition, titled Emilio Varela. An Intimate Reverie, was inaugurated on Wednesday, April 22, and commemorates the 75th anniversary of the death of painter Emilio Varela (Alicante, 1887-1951). The exhibition will be open until September and includes works from the Museo Nacional del Prado and the Mubag's own collection.
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"This tribute to one of the great masters of Alicante painting marks a very special day for the culture of our province, enriches our heritage, and offers us a unique opportunity to approach the profound world of an artist who marked an era and whose work remains an essential reference."

the Culture deputy
The exhibition is located on the ground floor of the Museum, in a space specially set up for its proper display. The director of the Mubag and curator of the exhibition, along with the technician, explained that for this special anniversary, an original exhibition narrative was sought, contacting the painter's descendants and collectors to create an intimate and enriching space with temporary loans of works.
The exhibition starts from three main paintings where the artist uses the “picture within a picture” technique, corresponding to three interiors of the family home in Alicante. From these works, other paintings and drawings that go beyond his main body of work are displayed, forming novel visual sets. Additionally, other groupings create visual interplay, such as the unreleased painting La anciana, exhibited alongside a photograph of a young Emilio Varela at Joaquín Sorolla's painting school in Madrid.
The exhibition itinerary concludes with a special section dedicated to the extraordinary friendship between Varela and Oscar Esplá, whose 50th death anniversary is also commemorated. The portrait that artist Maurice Fromkes dedicated to the Alicante composer in 1926 is displayed alongside words Esplá wrote about the painter and three other paintings by Varela.
Among the unreleased works on display are portraits of the Alicante painter Andrés Buforn, a great friend of Varela, as well as those of his mother and brother. Portraits of Varela's relatives, such as his mother Manuela Isabel, his brother Joaquín Varela Isabel, and some nephews, are also exhibited, along with graphite sketches of female figures and colored harlequin figure notes.

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