Exhibition ‘Menchu Gal. Images of a Life’

Organised together with Fundación Menchu Gal, the exhibition forms part of the venue's exhibition programme. Menchu Gal (Irún, 1919–2008) stood out for a defined artistic personality and for creating a universe of her own, linked to a restless and cosmopolitan outlook.

The exhibition presents a selection of works that traces her career through different genres, from landscapes to portraits, including still lifes and interiors. The pieces come from private collections, Ayuntamiento de Irún and the foundation itself.

The exhibition arrives twenty years after her last solo exhibition in Madrid, the city where she lived for more than fifty years and where she was part of Escuela de Vallecas.

Her paintings, recognisable for their use of colour, light and expressiveness, reflect an independent character, shaped both by the wartime context and by the aesthetic changes of the 20th century. In her portraits, Menchu Gal uses deliberate brushwork on faces to go beyond appearance and capture the essence of the figures, most of them female.