The works, spanning the period from 1937 to 2010, were donated to the Museum by the artists themselves in the cases of Carmen Calvo, Horacio Silva and Guillermo Pérez Villalta; by Ana Rosa Ballester, daughter of sculptor Antonio Ballester Vilaseca; and, in the case of Manuela Ballester’s work, by a private collector.
The works were presented by Pablo González Tornel, Director of the Museum of Fine Arts of Valencia, who was joined by, among others, Carmen Calvo and Horacio Silva.
González Tornel highlighted that the exhibition *Modern Times* demonstrated the Museum of Fine Arts’ commitment to twentieth-century art. “Thanks to the generosity of the artists, the Museum continues to grow, and the legacy entrusted to us becomes richer every day. Calvo, Silva, Ballester and Pérez Villalta are now part of the cultural heritage shared by all Valencians,” he added.
Works Received
Guillermo Pérez Villalta (Tarifa, 1948) is a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker and designer. A leading figure of Madrid’s New Figuration movement, he is regarded as one of the most representative painters of postmodernism in Spain. In 1985, Pérez Villalta received Spain’s National Award for Visual Arts.
At the artist’s own request, the Museum of Fine Arts of Valencia has received two of his works: Landscape—Conversation with Allegory, vinyl tempera on canvas (142 × 142 cm), completed in 2010; and Levante Beach from Monkili, acrylic on canvas (35 × 27 cm), signed in 1976.
Carmen Calvo (Valencia, 1950), recipient of Spain’s National Award for Visual Arts in 2013, is an artist renowned for her contribution to international contemporary art through a practice distinguished by its diversity of formal, technical and thematic approaches.
The artist has donated two works to the Museum of Fine Arts that are representative of her most distinctive body of work: *Draperies*, a mixed-media work incorporating fabric, canvas, paint and terracotta (150 × 190 cm), created in 1992; and *Like a Corpse*, a work from 2000 made using collage and photography (210 × 80 × 4 cm).
Horacio Silva (Valencia, 1950), meanwhile, is a painter whose work has undergone a remarkable artistic evolution. From his early realist works, which engaged with social issues, he moved through Cubism and Futurism before developing, in successive phases, a visual narrative rooted in mythology and later a form of symbolic figuration, while always retaining his distinctive style and exceptional technical mastery.
Silva has donated *The Four Seasons* to the Museum of Fine Arts of Valencia, an acrylic on canvas (190 × 250 cm), signed and dated 2003. The work is characterised by a restrained palette of predominantly cool tones, particularly greys, with incisions, textured elements and blue lines that create a sense of depth and movement.
Special mention should be made of *The Victors of Brihuega* by sculptor Antonio Ballester Vilaseca (1910–2001), a polychrome cement relief (115 × 142 × 40.5 cm) created in 1937. The Valencian artist presented the work in the Spanish Pavilion at that year’s International Exhibition in Paris. It has been donated to the Museum of Fine Arts by his daughter, Ana Rosa Ballester. The donation also includes the sculptor’s personal documentary and photographic archive.
Finally, thanks to the generosity of a private collector, the Museum has acquired *The Dead Guerrilla Fighter*, a linocut print (534 × 640 mm) by artist Manuela Ballester Vilaseca (1908–1994). Characterised by stark contrasts of black and white, the work was signed and dated in 1974 during her years of exile in Berlin. It evokes the harrowing memory of the Spanish Civil War, which had a profound impact on both the artist and her husband, Josep Renau.
