Cristina Alabau
Andrew Alfaro
Anzo
Rafael Armengol
Manuel Boix
Javier Calvo
camellia
Chronicle team
Amadeo Gabino
Joseph Guinovart
Arthur Heras
Manuel Hernández Mompó
Carmen Michavila
Joaquín Michavila
Anna Peters
Eusebio Sempere
Salvador Soria
Manuel Valdes
Aurora Valero
Salvador Victoria
Jose Maria Yturralde

Contexts of the Martínez Guerricabeitia Collection – University of Valencia
From December 20, 2022 to April 16, 2023.

José Martínez-Medina y Montoro (1919-2006) took charge, from 1952 and together with his brothers, of the company they had inherited from their father, the founder of the furniture factory, Juan Martínez Medina. José's dedication was not limited to collaborating in the management of the family business, but he also pursued a career as a designer for the company which, by now, is already considered one of the main contributions to the modernization of furniture and interior design in Valencia during the second half of the 20th century. His training at the School of Fine Arts in the city and his experience working in the family business from a very young age gave him high skills as a draftsman, creator of product designs and interior designer.

But also his constant interest in everything that was associated with artistic creation, as well as his anxiety to adapt and adapt his productive environment to the new aesthetic trends of his time made José Martínez-Medina an influential personality in the Valencian artistic world.

The store that the Martínez-Medina family opened on Carrer del Poeta Querol in Valencia in 1962 became, thanks to José's impulse, a meeting place with whom he shared his interests towards an innovative orientation of the creative act, well outside of from theoretical approaches, as in the case of Vicente Aguilera Cerni, or from artistic practice, as in that of Ximo Michavila. In addition to his relationships with artists who had already achieved some recognition in academic and critical circles, José Martínez-Medina contributed to making a large group of emerging young people gain visibility. For decades, he arranged the aforementioned furniture sales premises as a showroom for recent creations, some of which were the result of creative experiments and strongly non-conformist attitudes towards the most conventional conceptions. In this way, he acted as a contact and facilitator so that, even those who opted for the riskiest proposals, could find ways to enter the artistic market and spread their work.

The main body of the exhibition comes from the Martínez Guerricabeitia Collection of the University of Valencia, which has among its holdings a good representation of paintings and graphic works by artists about whom there is any evidence of an artistic relationship with José Martínez -Medina To this contribution, other works from the Martínez-Medina family have been added, as well as loans from the IVAM and various artists or their heirs, covering the period of greatest artistic involvement of José Martínez-Medina , from the sixties to the end of the twentieth century. In addition to the interest that these works have for themselves as evidence of the vitality of artistic creation in Valencia for a long period, the Valencian Archive of Design of the University of Valencia, as the organizing entity, wants to guide this exhibition towards the demonstration of the intense structural and homologous connections between the world of design and the plastic arts within the great framework of creative practices inspired by the ideal of innovation.