It could go unnoticed among the buildings on the narrow Calle del Mar where it is located, but once inside, the Valeriola Palace surprises with its magnificence. Even more so after the intense remodeling works that have turned this 17th century building into a new museum, with imposing works, which the patron Hortensia Herrero, vice president of Mercadona, opens today to the public in Valencia.
"It is a small jewel in the heart of Valencia," explained Herrero yesterday, who presented the art center that bears his name in the room that reveals fragments of the ancient wall of the city's Roman circus, one of the architectural finds of the building. . There are also remnants of the Muslim Balansiya (11th and 13th centuries), as two fountains belonging to an Islamic courtyard were located.
The cost of the restoration project and the interventions in a space of 3,500 square meters amounts to 40 million euros and has been carried out by ERRE Arquitectura, a firm of which one of the daughters of Herrero and Juan Roig, Amparo Roig, is a partner. , who yesterday explained how the building "had won the lottery since my mother noticed it." Roig explained how the project has sought to recover the original character of the existing building.
Careful to the millimeter, the Hortensia Herrero Foundation that promotes the center commissioned six artists to carry out different interventions in the premises and one of the most characteristic spaces, the entrance to the interior patio, is the work of Jaume Plensa. "He told us 'you have offered me the museum's melic,'" explained Javier Molins, the center's artistic advisor.
Plensa's work presides over the apse of the old palace and draws a tangle of letters from various alphabets through which he wants to show diversity to the world. Because the new museum has an international vocation, without losing sight of its roots. This is how Molins explained it, pointing out "we have brought the best art to a building that reminds us that València has always had an international vocation."
Next to Plensa's work, looking at the top of the patio you can discover Tomás Saraceno's installation, six clouds formed by irregular tetrahedra and dodecahedra covered by iridescent crystals. The other four installations are the work of Sean Scully, who is in charge of the building's chapel, Cristina Iglesias, Olafur Eliasson and Mat Collishaw, who reproduces the popular Cremà de las Fallas in a video-art exhibition. Herrero is very passionate about the Fallas festival.
In total there are a hundred works on display by 50 international artists, purchased at fairs, in Valencia and at various exhibitions at the Hortensia Herrero Foundation. Highlights include pieces by David Hockney, Antoni Tàpies, Roy Lichtenstein, Joan Miró, Mat Collishaw, Eduardo Chillida, Miquel Barceló, Andreu Alfaro, Georg Baselitz and Manolo Valdés, among many others.
The 18 rooms of the space are completed with works by Andreas Gursky, Anselm Kiefer, Anish Kapoor, Michael Rovner, Ann Vernoca Janssens, Tonny Crag, Joan Genovés, Julio González, Juan Uslé, Antonio Saura, Elena del Rivero, Julian Opie, Alexander Calder , Rafael Canogar or Peter Halley.
Acquired in 2007 by the businesswoman, yesterday she confessed that at some point "I have felt like throwing in the towel, thinking what need I have to get involved here with this." Herrero, who confessed herself "in love" with the building, considers that the center has managed to "bring to light the beauty of the building" and put the focus on another exhibition space in the city.
The Hortensia Herrero Foundation promotes the recovery of the artistic heritage of the Valencian Community - the building was in ruins when it acquired it -, as it already did in the church of San Nicolás and as it will soon do in the Santos Juanes de València.
