Valencian sculptor Miquel Navarro dies at 81; Mislata declares three days of mourning

Death and official mourning

Miquel Navarro, the Valencian sculptor and painter, died on Sunday, 1 November, at the age of 81, after a long illness. Sources close to him confirmed the death to Europa Press, and the Mislata City Council announced it on its social media channels. The council has decreed three days of official mourning until Tuesday, 3 November, at 23:59, and the town's flags will fly at half-mast. The council said that his work and his ties to Mislata leave an indelible mark on the city and on Valencian culture.

In its statement, the council said:

“Sculptor and cultural reference of our city, a key figure in creating the Casa-taller that bears his name and in the legacy that will always remain in Mislata.”

A career in sculpture and cities

Navarro was born in Mislata in 1945 and trained at the Escuela de Bellas Artes de San Carlos in Valencia. He began as a painter and devoted himself mostly to sculpture from 1972, while keeping up drawing and, much later, photography. From 1973 he built his series of 'cities', installations made of hundreds of small modular pieces that evoke urban landscapes and blur the line between sculpture and architecture. In 1980 he took part in the group show 'New images from Spain' at the Guggenheim in New York, which brought his work to the international stage. He received the Premio Nacional de Artes Plásticas in 1986 and the Premio Julio González in 2008, and he was a member of the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando. His public works include the 'Pantera Rosa' and the 'Parotet' in Valencia, and his pieces are held in permanent collections at the Guggenheim New York, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Reina Sofía in Madrid and the IVAM in Valencia.

The Casa Taller in Mislata

Navarro bought a former drugstore warehouse in the Morería quarter of Mislata in the 1980s and used it as his workshop for more than four decades. After four years of rehabilitation work, the site opened in June as a museum run by the Fundació Miquel Navarro. The renovation kept the original spaces, roofs and walls, preserving the building's industrial character. RTVE reports that the space holds more than 400 of the artist's works. The house was the place where he conceived and made much of his large-format sculpture.