The City Council and Fundación MAPFRE program a series of cultural activities on the occasion of the exhibition ‘Goya. Disasters of War’ exhibition

The Mirador del Carmen will host a recital by musician Abraham Boba of the group ‘León Benavente’, a dance show by choreographer Luz Arcas and a lecture by Leyre Bozal, curator of Collections of Fundación MAPFRE.

The exhibition of engravings ‘Goya. Desastres de la Guerra’ at the Mirador del Carmen is extended until March 31.

The Estepona City Council and Fundación MAPFRE have programmed a series of cultural activities on the occasion of the exhibition ‘Goya. Disasters of War. Collections Fundación MAPFRE’, which can be visited until March 31 at the Mirador del Carmen.

The cycle of activities will begin next Tuesday, February 13, with the conference ‘The struggle for life’, which will be given by the curator of Collections of Fundación MAPFRE, Leyre Bozal, in the auditorium of the Mirador del Carmen. With a degree in Art History, Bozal is a researcher and author of several books on art and has been working at Fundación MAPFRE since 2009. The conference will begin at 8 p.m. and admission will be free until full capacity is reached.

The next event will take place on February 15, at 8 p.m., with the musician and poet Abraham Boba. The member of the musical group ‘Leon Benavente’ will offer the recital ‘Know your enemy’ that he has created for the occasion and is based on the ancient text ‘The Art of War’ by Sun Tzu. This artist from Vigo formed the group ‘León Benavente’ in 2013 and has written all his songs for the four albums he has released to date. Collaborator of media such as Radio 3, he published in 2021 his first collection of poems ‘Esto no es una canción’ with the publishing house Espasa.

The cycle of activities will end on Saturday, March 9, at 8 p.m., with the dance show ‘La cosa y la fuerza’ by the dancer and choreographer from Malaga Luz Arcas, winner of the II Godot 2023 Award for Best Dance Work for ‘Mariana’. The artist has also been recognized with the El Ojo Crítico de Danza award in 2015 and has been a finalist for Best Female Dance Performer at the Talía Awards in 2023 and at the Max Awards in 2017 and 2022. Her repertoire has toured different countries, accompanied by teaching projects in Europe, Africa, America and Asia. She is also the author of the book ‘I thought dancing would save me’.

Invitations for the performances of Abraham Boba and Luz Arcas will be available at the box office of the exhibition hall from two days before each performance.

On the other hand, it should be noted that the Consistory and Fundación MAPRE have extended the exhibition period of the exhibition ‘Goya. Desastres de la Guerra’, so the exhibition can be visited until March 31. The collection is made up of 80 prints that Francisco de Goya y Lucientes made to express the pain and anguish he felt at the events of the war and its consequences on the civilian population.

Regarding the exhibition, it should be noted that Francisco de Goya’s engravings constitute one of the most important parts of the Fundación MAPRE collections and confirm the interest that this organization has always shown in works on paper and specifically in engravings.

Goya’s modernity in depicting a war and its consequences is still in full force today. He is undoubtedly the first artist to do so without extolling the heroism of one side or the other, without taking sides. On the contrary, he shows the pain and barbarism of such an event, and in doing so, he universalizes it. Goya depicts what happened during the War of Independence, but in reality it could be about any war.

The exhibition can be visited free of charge by those registered in the city. The presence of these works of Goya consolidate the Mirador del Carmen as an exhibition space of national reference. In that sense, the center was inaugurated with a pictorial collection of Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza, which made an interesting journey through the Spanish painting of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Information about the participants in the series of activities

Leyre Bozal (Madrid, 1978) holds a degree in Art History from the Complutense University of Madrid. She began her professional career as a professor at that university and shortly after joined, also as a teacher, the Istituto Europeo di Design, where she taught for four years. Since 2009 she has been Curator of Collections at Fundación MAPFRE, where she has also worked as a curator, coordinator, scientific director of catalogs, etc…

Her curated exhibitions include El espíritu de una época. Boldini y la pintura española a finales del s.XIX”, September 2019-January 2020, Fundación MAPFRE, Madrid or Ignacio Zuloaga en el París de la Belle Époque 1889-1914, Madrid, Fundación MAPFRE, September 28, 2017-January 7, 2018.

Much of her work focuses on writing, which seems to be where she feels most comfortable, and she has published books and articles on art, such as Pablo Picasso, Suite Vollard, 1930-1937, Madrid, Fundación MAPFRE, TF. Editores, 2009, Colás y su amigo Velázquez, Antonio Machado libros, Madrid, 2011, “¿Por qué combate el Lef?”, in AAVV, De Chagall a Malévich: el arte en revolución, Fundación MAPFRE, Madrid, 2019, Il Mediterraneo come Genius loci, in AAVV, “L’alfabeto del segno e della materia, Joan Miró Genius Loci”, Palazzo Salmatoris, CHERASCO (CN). Catalogo della mostra, Araba Fenice Edizioni sas., Milano, 2022 or José Gutiérrez Solana, el 98 más allá del 98, Obras de las Colecciones Fundación MAPFRE, in “José Gutiérrez Solana, Colecciones Fundación MAPFRE”, Madrid, 2023.

Abraham Boba is the pseudonym that David Cobas (Vigo, 1975) uses to sign all his works. In 2013 he forms the group León Benavente, in which he writes all the songs and with which he publishes four albums to date. In 2021 he publishes his first poetry book, Esto no es una canción (Espasa) and creates a show based on those texts. He is a regular contributor to some media such as Radio3. Conoce a tu enemigo is a recital created for the occasion, based on the millenary text El arte de la guerra by Sun Tzu.

Luz Arcas founded the company La Phármaco in 2009. She holds a degree in Choreography from the Conservatorio Superior María de Ávila in Madrid and in Stage Direction from the Real Escuela Superior de Arte Dramático. Among her creations are Psicosis 4.48, in co-production with the Teatro Español (June 2023). Mariana (XXII Bienal de Flamenco de Sevilla, in co-production with Teatros del Canal and MA scène nationale – Pays de Montbéliard, October 2022 – April 2023).Todas las santas (FIT de Cádiz, in co-production with Teatro de la Abadía, November 2022), Trilla, (duo with composer Le Parody, Museo Thyssen Málaga, April 2022), Toná (Festival de Otoño de Madrid, in co-production with Teatro de la Abadía, November 2020), Una gran emoción política (Teatro Valle Inclán, in co-production with Centro Dramático Nacional, 2018), Miserere. Cuando la noche llegue se cubrirán con ella (Teatros del Canal, 2017) and Kaspar Hauser. El huérfano de Europa (Madrid Autumn Festival, 2016).

He explores non-theatrical spaces such as Y qué más da, todo es gracia (Museo Picasso de Málaga, Picasso-Calder exhibition, 2019), Habitación con mi alma fuera (Museo Picasso de Málaga, Bruce Nauman exhibition, 2019), La errancia (Centro de Cultura Contemporánea Conde Duque, Garden State, 2018), Chacona (Centro Pompidou de Málaga, 2015) or Embodying what was hidden (King Juan Carlos Center of New York, 2015).

He is currently preparing Bordo poniente his next dance piece to be developed in Guadalajara (Mexico), co-produced by the University of Guadalajara and to be premiered in November at the Teatro Experimental de Jalisco. He has recently choreographed the opera Rigoletto at the Teatro Real in Madrid, co-produced by the Teatro de la Maestranza in Seville, Bilbao and the Tel Aviv Opera House. He has choreographed for the IPCNA (Lima, Peru, 2021, together with choreographer Luz Gutiérrez), for the National Company of El Salvador (Dolorosa, 2019 and La Anunciación, 2021) and for the Víctor Ullate Ballet (Los hijos más bellos, 2018). She also carries out other types of artistic and pedagogical projects such as Mundo y lenguaje (Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, 2016) or Tú que tienes la luz (National School of Drama of New Delhi, 2016).

Her repertoire has toured different countries, accompanied by teaching projects in Europe, Africa, America and Asia. She is the author of the book Pensé que bailar me salvaría, published in October 2022 by Continta me tienes.

Luz Arcas has been awarded the II Godot Award 2023 for Best Dance Work for Mariana, and has been a finalist for Best Female Dance Performer at the Talía Awards in 2023 and at the Max Awards in 2017 and 2022. She has also won the El Ojo Crítico de Danza award in 2015, the award for Best Female Dance Performer at the Lorca Awards in 2015 and the Injuve and Málaga Crea awards in 2009.