Aurèlia Muñoz: the centenary of a visionary of textile art

BarcelonaFor Aurèlia Muñoz (Barcelona, 1926-2011), art was like "a small miracle", as she herself said. "You don't know what's happening, but it's done. Even when you've been looking at it for a while, you say: ‘How did I do that?’ You can't even explain it," explained Muñoz, who would have turned one hundred years old this Monday. After decades in a certain oblivion –Catalonia is a country with a very short memory for its artists–, she returned to the forefront when the MoMA in New York bought three of her works in 2018. This fact consolidated her as one of the key figures in textile art of the second half of the 20th century and as a pioneer who expanded its boundaries with sculptures that transform the space where they are located and that propose a sensory experience.

This year, Macba, the Reina Sofía Museum, and Einaidea (Fundació Eina) have joined forces to dedicate a major exhibition to her, Aurèlia Muñoz. Ens, which can be seen at the Reina Sofía Museum from April 29 and will arrive in Barcelona on November 5, where it will be presented expanded. In fact, the exhibition is one of the key projects for the museum's 30th anniversary.

Coinciding with the centenary, three reconstructions of sculptures from the series Ocells-estels can already be seen in the atrium of Macba, which were shown at the Crystal Palace in Madrid and at the Drassanes in the 1980s. "I am very interested in space, it has always interested me, and I think it has more and more possibilities to work in it. Many of my works, in reality, are three-dimensional and pose the same problems, or similar ones, as a sculptor. I think the technique and texture are different, as are the materials, but in reality we are all moving towards the same goal," said Muñoz. She also liked to know the public's opinion, especially that of children, because they have no "prejudices" when it comes to saying what they think.

Living day to day surrounded by art

The artist's daughter, Silvia Ventosa –emeritus curator of textiles and fashion at the Design Museum of Barcelona and member of the exhibition's scientific committee–, recalls that they lived with her mother's works at home and talked about them “in a very natural way”, as if they were present. These are the “entities” to which the exhibition's title refers. “They had dinner and ate with us. I was studying philosophy –Ventosa explains–, I was reading Marx, and in Das Kapital there is a series of characters, or entities: some who own the labor, who are the artisans, and others who do not, who are the workers. She liked this very much, and we looked for the different entities that emerged, such as the communal, the religious, the historical...”

Aurèlia Muñoz and her husband, the lawyer Josep Ventosa, settled in an apartment on Gran Vía in Barcelona. When they were still teenagers and dating, Muñoz had written him a letter telling him that she wanted to dedicate herself to art and that she saw herself earning a living from drawing. Later, she discovered macramé while recovering from a broken leg. In the midst of Franco's regime, he gave her all the freedom she needed, and, moreover, he took good photographs of her work. “They were an atypical marriage: my mother had quite a lot of freedom to travel and do what she wanted, and my father gave her a lot of support. He was very interested in what she did, they laughed a lot. My father had a lot of work –he was a lawyer specializing in the wine industry–, but he placed great importance on my mother's work”.

Despite this, the beginning of Muñoz's career was not easy. But she soon found her place. “She was immediately selected for the Lausanne Biennial, and became part of a group of artists who are the most well-known: the Colombian Olga de Amaral, the American Sheila Hicks, and the Polish Magdalena Abakanowicz –explains Ventosa–. They were very close-knit, although each had their own projects. They greatly advanced the discipline, and the requirements of each biennial were very demanding. That biennial gave her a lot of momentum and many contacts, because museum directors, gallerists, and art critics gathered there. If she exhibited all over the world, a large part of it is thanks to that biennial”.

Silvia Ventosa moved into her mother's apartment a few years after her death and receives el ARA before sending some works from Muñoz's entire career, scattered around the house, to the Reina Sofía Museum. The project's scientific director, Manuel Cirauqui, began working with Aurèlia Muñoz's legacy in 2023 with a project at the Centre Grau-Garriga d’Art Tèxtil Contemporani in Sant Cugat. The curator and member of Einaidea, Rosa Lleó, has also collaborated on the curation of Aurèlia Muñoz. Ens. For Cirauqui, Muñoz is "a medium" and "a visionary of the anthropocene".

With the works in the family apartment, one can appreciate the richness of Aurèlia Muñoz's universe, which also draws on popular techniques and wisdom, as well as the natural world. "In the project part, I worked alone, but in the manipulation of the fibers, María Jesús and Josefina helped me, with whom I maintained a constant and important dialogue," says Ventosa. One can also see how, later, in the eighties, she abandoned textiles and began to work with papers that she made herself. "Then she entered the world of water and the marine world, perhaps also because she was getting older and paper is lighter."

Aurèlia Muñoz missed recognition. "She continued working, recognition did not interest her. Perhaps it was not so public, but she had her clients, her projects, and the collectors did not abandon her," concludes Ventosa.