Martha Jungwirth, the woman who paints however she wants

THE language of art, always on the knife’s edge to find the exact word, struggles to describe the style of art. Martha Jungwirth, the Viennese artist who landed yesterday at the Guggenheim Museum with her palette of impossible colors under her arm and the torrent of inspiration flowing through her veins without having a serious and severe face, one of those professorial faces that An old friend was speaking. What’s more, he broke protocol and asked for the microphone to speak in public. She thanked “a lot of people” for their assistance and the affection with which they treated her upon her return to Spain. The last time she was there was in 1966 to collect the Joan Miró award, as the museum director recalled, Juan Ignacio Vidartewho invited us to visit “a retrospective of five decades” and recalled that the summer season was inaugurated.

Experts speak of an abstract vocabulary, of a style that straddles between figuration and abstraction, of a kind of diary that records their bodily involvement in the creative process, of a dynamic extension of their own being where intelligent structures of lines and lines emerge. stains driven by your movements and emotions. Canutas, you see.

One was thinking about these things when a guest who wanted to remain anonymous and who had seen the exhibition of nearly 70 works went down in the elevator and commented to his partner: “Beyond what you see, it is what you feel when you see it.” see him”. Please forgive me for stealing the conversation. She seems much more elegant than the way I had thought to describe her: the woman who paints however she wants.

Juan Ignacio and Martha were accompanied on the stand by the emissary of the Occident insurance company.Pablo Sampedreither; the Minister of Culture, Bingen Zupiria; the provincial deputy of Culture, Leixuri Arrizabalaga and the curator of the exhibition, Lekha Hileman. They were very close Jon Azua, Pilar Aresti, Fernando García Macua and a large group of authorities and people linked to the setup, machinery and management of the museum. Many of them already knew that Martha is a confessed lover of Francisco de Goya (if you put your imagination to the matter you will be able to see three majas lying among the works chosen in the compilation…); that the forest fires in Australia hurt his soul, where so many kangaroos died, or that he uses cardboard, accounting books or brown paper, in a challenge to traditional artistic conventions in search of “the anodyne, the ignored.”

Witnesses to everything I tell you were the former mayor of Bilbao, Ibon Areso, Mariano Gómezthe gallery owner Roberto Saenz de Gorbea; the Councilor for Culture, Gonzalo Olabarriawho greeted himselfn Cristina Bañales, Josune Ariztondo and Beñe Ariztondo; Sylvie Laneaux, Javier Caño, Alberto Ipiña, Begoña Bidaurrazaga, Txema Vázquez Eguskizto; artists of the stature of Richard Pérez, Sagrario Nebreda or Julio Ortúnaccompanied byr Lola Martínez, María Ángeles Izquierdo, Chus Navarro, Emilia Coca, Felisa Ramos, Itxaso Elorduy, Elier Goñi; the president of the FAS film club, Txaro Landa, Txarly Otaola; the director of ItsasmuseumJon Ruigomez; the director of BBK Social Work, Nora Sarasola; Angel Tobalinaaccompanied by Marian Parra; María Jesus Cava, Germán Palacios, Begoña Cava, Carlos Román, Blanca Aparicioon behalf of Bizkaia Energía; Ana OlasoPetronor engineer; Marta Ortuzar and Carlos Pérez Urrutiawho just yesterday celebrated their wedding anniversary, Cristina Agirre, Raquel González, Eduardo Andrade, Alejandra Pinedo, Joseba Madariaga and a whole legion of men and women who came to enjoy half a century of work by good Martha, the woman capable of letting herself be carried away by her sensations.