Els Ocells-estels d'Aurèlia Muñoz

Coinciding with the start of the Aurèlia Muñoz Centenary, the MACBA atrium features three reconstructions of sculptures from the Ocells-estels (1982) series, one of the artist's most emblematic works.

Muñoz conceived these pieces to be installed at a great height and to engage in a dialogue with natural light, conditions that the current presentation faithfully reproduces.

In 1982, the artist showed the series at the Palacio de Cristal in Madrid and the Drassanes Reials in Barcelona ─two spaces of exceptional scale and light qualities─ and subsequently, the set was selected for the 11th International Tapestry Biennale in Lausanne (1983).

Muñoz's intention was for the works to hover over places and people, thereby fostering an expansion of space both outdoors and inside large buildings.

At MACBA, these works will occupy the atrium of the Meier Building for much of the commemorative year, before later migrating to various locations throughout the Catalan territory.

Aurèlia Muñoz Ventura was born in Barcelona on 13 April 1926 and, after dedicating more than five decades to artistic practice through multiple mediums, today she is recognised as one of the key figures for understanding the evolution of contemporary art in our era.

This commemoration highlights the pioneering and visionary role of an artist who, with her work ─fundamentally sculptural, but also pictorial and graphic─, traversed and renewed ancestral techniques such as embroidery, knotting (or macramé) or papermaking; and she did so in dialogue with the artistic avant-gardes of her time, while creating links between disciplines such as art, architecture, theatre and engineering.

Her work reveals a committed perspective that anticipates eco-social concerns such as material sustainability and relationships between species, as well as the importance of diversity and poetics as nexuses between the realms of artistic production and life.

The production and installation