The programme advisor of the Andalusian Youth Institute (IAJ) in Almería, Rosa Maldonado Aguilera, has encouraged the young people of the province to get to know «the rich cultural legacy that the Almanzora region treasures» during her visit to the Casa Ibáñez Museum located in Olula del Río, accompanied by the councillor for Youth of this municipality, Miguel Torregrosa, and the director of the museum, the painter Andrés García Ibáñez.
«This cultural space is a jewel that is still unknown to many people in our province,» said Rosa Maldonado, who called on «young people, their families and schools from all corners of Almería to visit this museum and learn first-hand about the work of artists from Almería and other important national artists.
Likewise, the programme advisor of the IAJ – an entity attached to the Regional Ministry of Employment, Training and Self-Employment – thanked the director of the Casa Ibáñez Museum «for his involvement in setting up, maintaining and managing this cultural space» and the councillor for Youth in Olula del Río «for his interest in disseminating the cultural heritage of his region throughout the province».
The Casa Ibáñez Museum was inaugurated on 24 November 2004 and is one of the largest collections of Contemporary Art in Andalusia. Created between 1996 and 2004 by Andrés García Ibáñez (Olula del Río, 1971), a painter with a young and valued career within contemporary Realism, its doors were opened to the public on 4 March 2005. Since then it has established itself as the most significant cultural facility in the Almanzora and one of the most representative in the Southeast of Spain.
It is managed by the Ibáñez Cosentino Art Foundation, an institution created in June 2005 and owned by the museum’s founder, Andrés García Ibáñez, and the Almeria-based multinational Cosentino. Since 18 July 2007, the museum has been part of the Andalusian Register of Museums of the Andalusian Ministry of Culture of the Andalusian Regional Government (BOJA no. 208 of 22 October 2007).
The museum’s collection currently consists of more than 1,200 inventoried works, more than 95% of which were contributed by Andrés García Ibáñez to the Foundation. It is, therefore, the artist’s private collection, both his personal work and those of other artists that he has been accumulating in little more than a decade, which offers visitors the opportunity to get to know the painter’s entire creative universe (work, tastes and influences).
The scope of this collection is modern and contemporary Spanish art, from Goya to the present day, with special attention to the great Spanish figurative tradition. Thus, along with the paintings of the Olulenca artist, works by Goya, Sorolla, Cabral Bejarano, the Madrazo family (Federico, Raimundo and Ricardo), Benlliure, Benedito, Sorolla, Zuloaga, López Mezquita, Chicharro, Mateo Inurria, Benjamín Palencia, Pinazo, Golucho, Noé Serrano, Roberto Manzano, Juan Polo, Paco López, Joaquín Ramo, Alfonso Fraile and Antonio López, among many others, are on display. Also represented are the most significant Almerian authors of the 20th century, such as Ginés Parra, Federico Castellón, Jesús de Perceval, Capuleto, Pedro Gilabert and Carlos Pérez Siquier, among many others.
The Museo Casa Ibáñez in Olula del Río is twinned with the Museo Ibáñez in Melilla, located in the historic Torre de la Vela building. An institution inaugurated in September 2012, managed by the Department of Culture of the Autonomous City and consisting of a hundred works of Spanish Art, donated altruistically by Andrés García Ibáñez.
Since May 2015, the Casa Ibáñez Museum has been present in Almería capital through the agreement signed by the City Council of Almería with the Ibáñez Cosentino Art Foundation for the musealisation, cession of collections and the management of the Doña Pakyta Art Museum. A cultural endowment located at the end of Paseo de Almería, in the house that Francisca Díaz Torres -popularly known as Doña Paquita- donated to the Consistory of Almería, through which the visitor will have the opportunity to enjoy a wide panoramic view of Almeria’s art, from the 1880s to the 1970s.