The Museo Gustavo de Maeztu presents the exhibition Mirar y mirar[se] by the artist Angela Moreno
From 9 May to 29 June 2025, the Gustavo de Maeztu Museum is showing an exhibition dedicated to the work of Angela Moreno, a multidisciplinary artist specialising in engraving, in the temporary exhibition hall.
The exhibition is the result of the vital moment in which the artist finds herself, a moment to look back, contemplate the work she has done and share it with the public.
Mirar y mirar[se] is a retrospective of more than eighty portraits made over the last twelve years. Portraits and self-portraits from different periods and personal moments of the artist, made in different media, with different techniques, such as drawing on paper and on prepared wood, painting, oil, gold leaf, engraving and even pieces of jewellery that are related to certain portraits and self-portraits exhibited in the gallery.
Some of them are part of larger projects that have been shown in individual exhibitions such as: Nature and Portraits (2016), Woven Nature, Made Silence (2019), When Dreams Go to the Eyes (2022) among others.
The exhibition is presented in the hall of the Museum and continues in the Temporary Exhibition Hall. In the hall is one of her latest pieces, six large-format portraits of women artists and their immediate environment.
The spectator looks at and observes Angela’s works, but at the same time is looked at by the faces represented in the pieces; there is a play of glances between the faces and the visitor’s gaze.
There are thus multiple gazes, the gaze of the person who agrees to be portrayed by the artist and later, the gaze of those of us who look at that portrait, like mirrors that repeat each other.
The artist also deals with absences in the exhibition, in this way there is the possibility of having her loved ones close to her. Angela understands time as a fragmentation and not as a continuity. This is how memory becomes an exercise in recovering moments that are concentrated in gestures.
The artist’s self-portraits have an intense emotional charge, linked to the loss of people close to her, for her they are tributes in which she presents herself from an affected body.
In this way, it is possible to focus on two aspects of Angela’s work, the question of the gaze and the technical-material solution.
In the process of construction of the artist’s works, emotional expression is perceived both in the composition and in the technique and means used to achieve it, Angela is very conscious of what she does and how, influencing the choice of artistic means that shape what she seeks to convey.
The artist considers the exhibition a portrait of her closest circle, calling it ‘Her gallery of affections’.
Angela Moreno
Graduated in Fine Arts, specialising in Graphic Techniques, she was an Associate Lecturer in the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of La Laguna in Tenerife from 1990 to 1994. She became interested in self-training through courses that led her to experiment with different techniques and materials. There, she initiated the idea of giving courses on non-toxic engraving processes, based on harmless materials. Since 1995 she has been running her printmaking workshop in the town of Huarte in Navarre, where the artist’s studio is currently located.In 1998 he began to teach drawing and painting at the Casa de Cultura in Huarte. It was from this teaching experience that the need to teach portraiture arose, which in turn had a direct impact on his artistic work, as it allowed him to experiment with methodologies that he later applied to his work. During his training he did not pay attention to drawing the human figure or the portrait, but when faced with the challenge of incorporating it into the educational programme, he began to develop research into portraiture and its possibilities.
Admission to this exhibition is free and it can be visited from Tuesday to Saturday, from 9:30 to 13:30 and in the afternoons from 16:00 to 19:00; Sundays and public holidays, from 11:00 to 14:00.
