Museo Würth La Rioja
This year marks the fifteenth anniversary of the Museo Würth La Rioja, one of the most outstanding cultural centers in the region. In these 15 years of existence, the institution has developed an attractive cultural and educational program aimed at all audiences, becoming a multi-faceted space open to all types of contemporary culture, generating a link between current artistic dynamics and the local environment. Its strong social and educational commitment is embodied through a permanent program of activities that aim to develop the public’s sensitivity towards contemporary art, bringing intellectual discourses on current artistic practice closer to visitors.
In addition to these activities that promote the development of a certain personal sensitivity towards art from the points of view of reflection, debate, criticism, and experimentation, the museum organizes temporary exhibitions with pieces from the Würth Collection, one of the most important private collections of contemporary art in Europe. Its holdings currently comprise more than 18,200 pieces by some of the most fundamental creators of the history of art during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries such as Pablo Picasso, Louise Bourgeois, Anish Kapoor, Henry Moore, Edvard Munch, Andy Warhol, and Joan Miró. The collection also features outstanding monographic sections by Jean Hans Arp, Eduardo Chillida, Georg Baselitz, Christo and Jeanne-claude, and Anselm Kiefer, among others. Since 2003, they have also begun to bring together medieval Central European paintings by artists like Hans Holbein and Lucas Cranach the Elder, doing so under the title “Old Masters.”
The pieces of this large collection are not only exhibited in the Museo Würth La Rioja, but they also rotate around the 15 museums that the German firm has in Austria, Denmark, France, Holland, Italy, Norway, and Switzerland – the most recent of which was inaugurated in the midst of the pandemic in Künzelsau. In the case of the museum in La Rioja, the company also collects pieces for the Würth Spain Collection, with special interest in Spanish artists like Miquel Barceló, Manolo Valdés, Jaume Plensa, and Miquel Navarro, among others – thus rounding off the global view of the Würth Collection. These pieces of art, some of which are site-specific, together with the traveling exhibitions, the educational program, and the activities organized throughout these 15 years, have positioned the Museo Würth La Rioja as a cultural leader that no one should miss.
At the beginning of 2022, the museum will present “De la cabeza a los pies” (From Head to Toe), pieces in the Würth Collection involving the human figure – an excellent group exhibition that will bring together art by renowned contemporary artists like Magdalena Abakanowicz, Louise Bourgeois, Fernando Botero, Gilbert & George, Gustav Klimt, Andy Warhol, and Jaume Plensa.