Miquel Navarro

Miquel Navarro was born on 29 September 1945 in Mislata, a town on the western edge of Valencia. His mother, Paquita Navarro, came from Siete Aguas, inland in the province of Valencia. Navarro later said that his fascination with cities came from growing up in a place that was both rural and industrial, close to Valencia, with tanneries, soap and cigarette paper factories and flour mills around him. These childhood surroundings shaped the move in his work between the countryside and the city, nature and industry.

From 1964 to 1968 he studied painting at the San Carlos School of Fine Arts in Valencia.

Navarro began as a painter in 1964, but from 1972 he concentrated on sculpture, while continuing to paint, draw and write poetry. In 1973 he exhibited his first Ciutat, an imaginary city built in clay, which became the central theme of his work. These modular installations, made from countless small volumes and vertical structures in terracotta and later iron, steel, aluminium and other materials, presented urban spaces almost like the archaeological remains of an unknown past. He described the city as a body, with arteries and a heart.

In 1980 his work was shown in New York and at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, and exhibitions followed in Paris, Berlin, Mexico, Florence and elsewhere. In 1989 he designed sets for two theatre productions. In the 1980s he bought an old drugstore warehouse in the Morería quarter of Mislata and turned it into his studio, where for four decades he made most of his large scale works.

His monumental public sculptures include the Font Pública in Valencia (1984), known popularly as La Pantera Rosa, Minerva Paranoica in Castellón (1989), El Fanalet in Quart de Poblet, Fraternitat in Barcelona (1992), the Torre del Sonido at Carlos III University in Getafe, Boca de Luna in Brussels, Oteando in Torrelavega, La Mirada in Vitoria-Gasteiz, Mantis in Murcia and El Parotet in Valencia. His work is in the collections of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Guggenheim Bilbao, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Museo Reina Sofía, MACBA in Barcelona and the Valencian Institute of Modern Art (IVAM), to which he donated 512 works, 81 of them sculptures, in 2005.

In 2008 he was elected to the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando in Madrid, and he gave his entrance address in November 2009 on childhood games as the forge of art. In 2020 he created the Miquel Navarro Foundation to preserve and promote his work, and its house and studio museum opened in Mislata on 25 June 2026.

Navarro lived all his life in Mislata, in the street where he grew up, and said that despite his international career he felt fundamentally Valencian. His lifelong partner was the journalist Rafa Marí, who was with him when he died.

Miquel Navarro died on Sunday 1 November 2026 at his home in Mislata, aged 81, after a long illness, surrounded by his loved ones. He had wished to spend his last moments in the house where he had always lived. The death was reported by El País, eldiario.es, Levante-EMV and the Europa Press agency.

The town council of Mislata declared three days of official mourning, with flags at half mast, and called him a universal artist who turned his roots into a legacy for the world. His family said his body would lie in state from Monday 2 November at the Casa-Taller of the Miquel Navarro Foundation, surrounded by his art, and that he would be buried in the cemetery of Siete Aguas beside his mother.

Navarro is regarded as one of the most important Spanish sculptors of his generation and a key renewer of the language of sculpture in late twentieth century Spain. His cities of terracotta and metal, and his towering public pieces, made his work part of everyday life in Valencia and many other cities. The foundation and house and studio museum in Mislata, which he lived to see open, keep his workshop and a large body of his work together for the public.