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Silvestre de Edeta Museum

In 2007, the Town Hall of Llíria opened the Silvestre de Edeta Museum with the collection titled “Space for a Sculptor”.

The building chosen to house the collection is the «Ca la Vila Vella» palace. A Gothic-civil style architectural monument built in the fifteenth century to house the ancient Jury Chamber of the medieval Llíria which still preserves its diaphragm Gothic arches.

The museum has 150 works, of which 90 are drawings, monotypes, watercolours and oil paintings, 42 are donated sculptures, and 18 are sculptures on loan.

On the outside the «Cap del Pare Túria» is exhibited. It’s a fragment of one of the sculptor’s most representative pieces: the fountain in the plaza de la Mare de Deu in Valencia which represents the River Turia with its eight irrigation channels .

Inside, opposite the entrance, there is a recreation of the sculptor’s studio where visitors experience the feeling of being inside the artist’s studio and where the creative process of a sculptural piece is presented, from the initial idea in the sketches to the presentation of the finished sculpture.

The Aula Virtual is on the left, where an audiovisual presentation on the life and works of the artist is screened with first-hand images and witnesses.

On the mezzanine there are finished sculptures on display with their drawings and sketches.

On the upper floor there are small bronze and marble sculptures on display, and a space for drawing and painting.

Manuel Silvestre i Montesinos

Manuel Silvestre i Montesinos (Llíria 1909-2014), known in artistic circles as Silvestre de Edeta, has been named Honorary Citizen of Llíria and Valencia.

As a child, he began his sculptural training in a stone and marble studio in Valencia. He went to the Escuela del Gremio de Maestros Carpinteros where he continued his training in drawing and sculpture.

In his teens, he left for the island of Majorca to complete his military service and he took the opportunity to graduate from the Escuela de Artes y Oficios in Palma. On his return to Valencia, he got a place at the Escuela Superior de Bellas Artes de San Carlos where he graduated and was appointed Scholar.

With Esteve Edo and Octavio Vicent, Silvestre formed part of a golden generation of early twentieth-century Valencian sculptors who had a Mediterranean conception of shapes. His work is essentially traditional, based on natural shapes.

His technique is very unique: he sculpts as he wishes, without getting involved in new tendencies, without worrying about the existence of innovative trends or sterile fashions.

He sometimes interprets shapes, other times he tends more to reality, yet always seeking the essence. He uses planes and volumes, simplifying shapes. He seeks the elementary, the primitive imagination.

Silvestre’s particular artistic style is evident in his delicate, almost poetic work. His work is a personal way of serenely caressing life.

Ultimately, Silvestre’s work is his means of communicating, talking, transmitting his human quality of a sincere person and an honest worker.

“The sculptor’s words”

“If we consider or try to classify my sculptural work in some way, we must bear in mind the place, the moment and the environment in which it comes about.
It could be classified within the so-called figuration derived from classical tradition.
As a Valencian, it would be hard to steer away from or escape the influence of my masters of Mediterranean artistic expression, with little concern for isms but more concern for theme and delicacy, both when dealing with a female nude, a portrait, maternity or the value of planes and volumes that correspond to caressing the scene of life.
Thus my work encounters the natural aspects of modern and figurative sculpture”.

 

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