Collection: Juan Navarro Ramón ┃ Surrealist Work

Born in 1903 on the outskirts of Altea, Juan Navarro Ramón always looked to his hometown, the Mediterranean, and its light as his guiding lights. His long artistic career began with his training in Valencia, continued in Madrid, and later in Barcelona, ​​where, at only twenty-two years old, he won First Prize for Painting. The Spanish Civil War caught Navarro Ramón in the Republican zone, which he represented at the 1937 International Exposition in Paris alongside Picasso's Guernica and works by Miró and Julio González. Navarro Ramón attended the exposition regularly until 1962.

Although Navarro Ramón's paintings are exhibited in prestigious museums such as the Reina Sofía and the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, and have traveled to galleries in Argentina, France, Germany, Belgium, and England, the artist always felt a complete indifference toward the paths to success. He believed that the work should speak for itself and that any self-respecting painter should forbid themselves from making self-promotional statements. Many times, as art critic Carlos Areán pointed out, Navarro Ramón was invited to participate in covert publicity campaigns where it wouldn't have been enough to simply exhibit his canvases; he would have had to seduce the public. Navarro Ramón always refused to be the protagonist of such schemes. He remained the same quiet, unassuming, hardworking, and humble man in his public life, attaching little importance to the market value of his paintings, whose sales allowed him to live comfortably but without excess.

Navarro Ramón's life was always lived from within. Altea, Cannes, the French Riviera, and Sitges, where he died, were the inspirations for his life and his painting, intrinsically linked throughout his 50-year artistic career. His canvases convey a bittersweet feeling where beauty, the anguish of the passage of time, and nostalgia intertwine in constantly shifting proportions, without suggesting that any past era was better. Navarro Ramón did not escape his inner turmoil through art, but in doing so, he created more spontaneous and authentic works.

The critic Carlos Areán emphasized that, like Picasso, beneath the characteristics of the trend to which Navarro Ramón adhered at each moment, there is a recognizable personal stamp in the nuance of color, in the rhythms of the arabesques, and in the creation of an atmosphere that sets him apart.
purely from any other artist.

Mediterranean, sensual, and elegant, Navarro Ramón's works possess a subtle and silent line that settles lyrically onto canvases where nothing is forced or imposed. The fluidity of the forms is similar to that of Kandinsky after 1910 or Tharrats at Dau al Set from 1950 onward, giving us the impression that the work has not yet reached its definitive structure and that, like the skies of Altea, with their sparse clouds that are constantly forming and dissolving without ever releasing their rain, it will change the instant after we contemplate it. Nothing is permanent in these loose structures, and each one seems not so much a frozen slice in time, but rather one of the many images in a film that we will never be able to retain, detached from the preceding and the one that will follow.

WORKS IN MUSEUMS AND INSTITUTIONS

Museum of Modern Art in Paris

Collioure Museum (France)

Reina Sofía National Art Centre Museum, Madrid

National Library, Madrid

National Art Museum of Catalonia, Barcelona

Museum of Rosario (Argentina)

Museum of Fine Arts of Álava, Vitoria

Altea Town Hall

Juan Gil-Albert Alicante Institute of Culture,

Alicante Provincial Council

Museum of Contemporary Art of Alicante MACA

City Council of A Coruña

GROUP EXHIBITIONS

1930. Salón de Independiente, Madrid.

National Exhibition of Fine Arts, Madrid.

1937. Exhibition of Plastic Arts of the Ministry of Public Instruction, Barcelona (First prize for painting)

International Exposition, Paris

1952. Salon des Réalités Nouvelles, Paris

1954. Salon des Réalités Nouvelles, Paris

1955. Salon des Réalités Nouvelles, Paris

1964. “LAMBDA” Organization, Stockholm. (Selection of 20 years of European painting)

1966. Saint George's Hall, Barcelona

May Salon, Barcelona

1968. Marco Gallery, Edinburgh

1972. René Métras Gallery, Barcelona

Gaudí Room - Gaudifond Art, Barcelona

Zaragoza Biennial.

S'Art Gallery, Huesca.

Galería Nova, Barcelona.

1976. Basel International Art Fair

1979. Joan de Serrallonga Gallery, Barcelona.

2010. Modern Alicante

1900-1960, MUBAG (Gravina Museum of Fine Arts)

2016."Dalí, Miró,
Navarro Ramón and Picasso: Graphic Works." Aspe Museum, Alicante

2018. Palau Altea, Alicante

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

1929. Hall of the “Heraldo de Madrid”

1930. Hall of the “Heraldo de Madrid”

Galerías Layetanas, Barcelona.

1932. SYRA Gallery, Barcelona.

1933. Lyceum Club Femenino, Madrid.

SYRA Gallery, Barcelona.

1935. SYRA Gallery, Barcelona.

1938. Paris International Exposition. Pavilion of the Spanish Republic

Exhibition of Plastic Arts, of the Ministry of Public Instruction in Barcelona.

He is awarded the first prize for painting.

1940. Palais de la Loge, Mairie de Perpignan (France).

1944. “El Jardín” Gallery, Barcelona.

1949. Buchhola Gallery, Madrid.

1950. “El Jardín” Gallery, Barcelona.

1951. René Bréteau Gallery, Paris.

1953. Galanis-Heunschel Gallery, Paris.

1956. Pizarro Gallery, Buenos Aires.

Cultural Board. Rosario, Buenos Aires.

1958. Círculo de Bellas Artes, Madrid.

1959. Darmstädter Galerie, Darmstadt (Germany).

Casino Baden Weailer, Germany.

Municipal Museum of Visual Arts, Argentina.

Barcelona Athenaeum.

1961. Salle Messine de l Galerie R. Creuce, Paris.

1962. SYRA Gallery, Barcelona.

1964. Ateneo de Madrid, Santa Catalina Hall.

1966. General Directorate of Fine Arts, Madrid.

1967. René Métras Gallery, Barcelona.

1969. Skira Gallery, Madrid.

1972. Galería De Luis, Madrid.

S'Art Gallery, Huesca.

1973. Galería De Luis, Madrid.

1974. Art and culture room of the Caja General de Ahorros y MP La Laguna (Sta. Cruz de Tenerife).

1976. Gaudí Room - Gaudifond Arte, Barcelona

Propac Gallery, Madrid.

1977. Ribera Gallery, Valencia.

Luis Gallery, Madrid.

1981. Galería Nueva, Sitges (Barcelona).

1983. Galería D'Art Foz, Sitges (Barcelona).

1986. Yolanda Ríos Art Gallery, Sitges (Barcelona).

1988. Royal Artistic Circle, Barcelona.

1989. House of Culture of Las Rozas, Madrid.

1993. House of Culture of Altea, (Alicante).

2005. Palau Altea Center D'Arts (Alicante)

Palace of the Provincial Council of Alicante

2013. Casa Canyot, Altea