The City Council and the Zuloaga Foundation organize the exhibition ‘Women in the Zuloaga Collection. Seven centuries of art’ in the Mirador del Carmen

More than 120 works from the collection of the artists’ family will be on display from July 19 to September 29. The exhibition offers for the first time a social and iconographic history of European women from the Middle Ages to the present day.

The Estepona Town Hall and the Zuloaga Foundation organize the exhibition ‘Women in the Zuloaga Collection. Seven centuries of art’, which can be visited at the Mirador del Carmen Cultural Center from July 19 to September 29.

This exhibition offers for the first time a social and iconographic history of European women from the Middle Ages to the present day. It is made up of a selection of more than 120 works of art that have been collected by the Zuloaga family of artists since the first third of the 19th century, highlighting the significant number of works signed by the painter Ignacio Zuloaga; his father, the damascene artist Plácido; and his uncle, the ceramist Daniel.

The research and dissemination of the social history of women has not kept pace with the popularity of women’s demands. The academic literature has been experiencing gaps for centuries, even in the developed European historiography. This exhibition offers a surprising history of advances and setbacks, which contributes to understanding the current state of women today.

The knowledge of women of the past and the present has been made through the media of each era: religious sculptures, book miniatures, painted panels and canvases… up to the current publications of social networks. The Zuloaga Collection includes all kinds of plastic manifestations: Romanesque, Gothic and Renaissance carvings and panels, paintings by Zurbarán and his environment, El Greco, Morales… ceramics and ceramic panels, textiles, wrought iron, damascened steel, academic, impressionist, post-impressionist, symbolist and contemporary paintings.

In order to represent the social diversity of women, themes are contrasted: the female life cycle from birth to death, virgins and saints, rural and urban women, the marginal and the privileged, in the public and private spheres. Of special relevance is the genre of the female nude, so late and scarcely represented in Spanish art.

Another novelty is the presentation of the Zuloaga Collection, with an emphasis on the women who preserved, expanded and disseminated it. For if there are numerous writings about the artists, no attention has been paid to the women of the family, without whose contributions this collection would be impossible. For this reason, some of the women’s collections are also included, which contribute to understanding their tastes.

The exhibition is one hundred percent bilingual in Spanish and English, both in the videos and in the catalogs and posters.