The Gustavo de Maeztu Museum presents the exhibition ‘Journey to Estella’ by Pedro Salaberri

The exhibition, which will be open from 10 March to 7 June, offers a pictorial tour of Estella and Tierra Estella

From 10 March to 7 June 2026, the Gustavo de Maeztu Museum will host the exhibition ‘Journey to Estella’, a project by Navarran painter Pedro Salaberri conceived specifically around the city of Estella-Lizarra and the territory of Tierra Estella. The exhibition offers an in-depth interpretation of an artistic and vital link built up over a long artistic career.

Landscape has been the central focus of Salaberri’s pictorial research throughout his career. From a very young age, the artist has understood the act of walking as a form of knowledge and aesthetic experience. Travelling through the valleys, mountains, roads, villages and towns of Navarre has been a continuous process of observation and assimilation which, over time, has been transformed into painting. However, his work does not respond to a descriptive or topographical impulse. What he observes is not transferred to the canvas literally, but is filtered through memory and reworked from a personal perspective that constructs a new plastic reality.

Estella occupies a fundamental place within this itinerary. The city and its district have been the setting for numerous journeys over the decades, generating a significant body of work that now finds specific expression in this exhibition. Journey to Estella refers not only to a geographical journey, but also to a continuous process of return and reinterpretation, where the territory becomes sentimental geography.
The exhibition also establishes a dialogue with the section of the French Way of Saint James that crosses Tierra Estella, from the foothills of Alto del Perdón to Puente la Reina. Beyond its historical and cultural dimension, this route takes on a symbolic character in Salaberri’s painting: the road as transit, as a cumulative experience, as a metaphor for the creative process itself.

The exhibition mainly brings together recent work, although many of the landscapes depicted correspond to places revisited over time. This insistence on returning to the same settings does not imply repetition, but rather deepening. Through different stages, the artist has modulated his pictorial language, in the density of the material, in the chromatic vibration, in the construction of space, maintaining a structural coherence that defines his artistic identity.

Viaje a Estella thus allows us to understand Pedro Salaberri’s painting as an open and constantly evolving process, where discovery remains active despite the repetition of the motif. The return to the landscape is not a nostalgic gesture, but a reaffirmation of experience and the link with the territory.

With this exhibition, the Gustavo de Maeztu Museum reinforces its commitment to contemporary creation and to those artists whose work engages in a sustained dialogue with the cultural identity and landscape of Navarre, offering the public a proposal that transcends the landscape to enter the realm of memory, belonging and continuity.
The Museum is open Tuesday to Saturday, from 9:30 am to 1:30 pm during winter. In summer, the Museum is open Tuesday to Saturday, from 9:30 am to 1:30 pm and from 4:00 pm to 7:00 pm. On Sundays and public holidays, the opening hours are from 11:00 am to 2:00 pm. Admission is free.

Pedro Salaberri

Pedro Salaberri (Pamplona, 1947) is one of the most important Navarran painters of his generation. With a consolidated career, his work has been characterised by a constant dedication to landscape as the central axis of his artistic research. His work is based on direct experience of the territory, especially Navarre, which he transforms into plastic constructions that go beyond mere description to delve into a personal interpretation based on memory, light and atmosphere.
Trained at the School of Arts and Crafts in Pamplona, Salaberri began his artistic career at a very young age, participating in leading cultural initiatives such as the 1972 Pamplona Encounters. Throughout his career, he has held numerous solo and group exhibitions, consolidating his own language characterised by compositional solidity, material density and a particular sensitivity to space.

In 2022, he received the Príncipe de Viana de la Cultura Award, one of the highest cultural honours awarded by the Government of Navarra, in recognition of his solid career and his essential contribution to the artistic heritage of the community.
This exhibition offers an opportunity to get closer to the work of a creator whose painting continues to engage with the viewer through serenity, depth and a commitment to the landscape and culture of his homeland.