Miquel Navarro, Sculptor of Large-Scale, Pared-Down Cities and Valencia’s Beloved ‘Pink Panther,’ Dies at 81
Miquel Navarro, a sculptor known for his pared-down installation of cities that reflected on the promises of modernity in the latter-half of the 20th century, died on Sunday at 81 in Mislata, Spain, after a long illness, reports El País.
Navarro’s hometown of Mislata, just outside València, served as a never-ending source of inspiration for him throughout his career. “The city that inspired part of his imagery was also where he lived, worked, and developed much of his creative process. From his studio in the Morería neighborhood, the artist built a universal career without ever relinquishing his connection to the land where he grew up,” the Mislata City Council said in a statement announcing his death.
Part of a generation of Spanish artists who came to prominence in the 1980s, Navarro would make his first “City” sculpture in 1973, two years before the Franco regime ended. “In the fifties, I would approach the city on a tram, and the encounter with it was fascinating,” he told El País in 2009 of his inspiration for the decades-long series.
Meant to be walked around and through, these installations feature first dozens and then hundreds of elements in various shapes, from cuboids and truncated pyramids representing rows of homes or the campuses of factories to soaring cylinders and columns, stand-ins for skyscrapers.
“Even my most schematic sculptures, without entirely abandoning the figurative, always bear the marks of man,” he once said of his “Cities.” The earliest of these would be comprised of dozens of pieces of clay, though he would later fabricate his “Cities” from metals like aluminum and iron.
While some portions of the installation show the rigid order of a city grid, other parts feature elements strewn about, toppled over—a metaphor for the parts of the urban environment that can’t be as easily organized.
“Navarro’s cities generate arenas for the confrontation of ideas. Throughout his career, he has continually proposed a revision of our notions of space, construction, place, and of our own bodies as a singular measure of the human and the city,” reads an exhibition description for the Guggenheim Museum’s 2004 display of his Wall City (1995–2000), which had recently been acquired by the Guggenheim Bilbao.
A few years later, Navarro would offer another reading to his sculptures: “Eroticism is a very important part of my work,” Navarro told El Mundo in a 2009 interview. “On the one hand, it is represented by the totem pole, which is not only a human, phallic element, but a symbol of solitude and power, as is the case with skyscrapers.”
Calling him a “beloved son of Mistlata,” the Mislata City Council declared three days of official mourning from November 1–3, describing him as “one of the great figures of contemporary Spanish art, whose work has achieved international recognition and whose name will forever remain linked to the history, identity and collective memory of his hometown.”
Miquel Narravo was born on September 29, 1945, in Mislata. In 1964, he first took up painting and drawing before devoting himself exclusively to sculpture in 1974, according to a chronology produced by the Guggenheim Bilbao. He studied fine arts at the Escuela Superior de Bellas Artes de San Carlos in Valencia before dropping out in 1968, the year he participated in a group exhibition, “Nuestro yo,” at Círculo Universitario de Valencia.
In 1972, the year of his first solo show, Navarro begins working in sculpture before debuting his first “City” sculpture, La ciutat (1973–74), the following year at the Galería Val i 30 in Valencia.
Navarro would gain international attention for his inclusion in the 1980 exhibition “New Images from Spain” at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. In 1986, he would represent Spain at the Venice Biennale, alongside other artists of his generation, Ferran García Sevilla, José María Sicilia, and Cristina Iglesias. That same year, he won the Premio Nacional de Artes Plásticas (National Award for Plastic Arts), Spain’s top award for artists, given out by the Ministry of Culture. A 1989 exhibition at the Reina Sofía would see his 55-foot sculpture Minerva paranoica (Paranoid Minerva) installed in Madrid’s Palacio de Cristal.
The mid-1980s would also see Navarro engage in public sculpture, with the installation of his towering 75-foot painted-iron water fountain Fuente Pública (Public Fountain, 1986) in Valencia, meant to commemorate “the transfer of water from the Júcar River to Valencia,” per the Guggenheim Bilbao. The now-iconic sculpture would lovingly be called by its citizens La Pantera Rosa (The Pink Panther), for the pinkish hue it would get over the years and its resemblance to the cartoon character.
He would go on to make several other sculptures for cities across Spain and abroad. For Barcelona, he created Fraternitat (Fraternity, 1992), and for his hometown he would make three public works: Cabeza con luna menguante (Head with Waning Moon, 2001), L’Almassil (2010), and Caminante (Walker, 2022).
His love for Mislata and Valencia would see him donate hundreds of works for the public to enjoy. In 2005, he gave 530 works to the Institut Valencià d’Art Modern (IVAM). Then, in 2020, he created the Fundació Miquel Navarro to preserve his legacy, seeding it with a donation of over 400 works, including several “Cities” installations. Sited in his longtime studio, a 10,800-square-foot former warehouse that he moved into in the 1980s, the foundation opened to the public this past June the artist’s Casa-Taller (House-Workshop) to show some of the donated works.
“Today Mislata has bid farewell not only to a universal artist, but also to a generous and humble friend, a person deeply connected to this city,” Mislata mayor Carlos F. Bielsa said in a statement. “His House-Studio will always be the legacy and the greatest treasure we have to preserve and cherish his memory.
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