Exhibitions
Íñigo Navarro presents "Yesterday a tiger trod on your shadow" at the Lázaro Galdiano Museum
Figurative artist Íñigo Navarro, considered one of the most sought-after voices in contemporary painting internationally, is coming to a Spanish institution for the first time with his exhibition Ayer pisó tu sombra un tigre (Yesterday a tiger trod on your shadow). The exhibition, curated by Begoña Torres, which will open its doors in the Pardo Bazán Room of the Lázaro Galdiano Museum from September 27 to November 23, is presented as a plea in defense of painting.
Navarro establishes a dialogue between his large-format canvases and masterpieces from the museum's collection, including works by Francisco de Goya, creating a play of resonance that connects tradition and contemporaneity.
Two intruders outside Beirut, Íñigo Navarro, 2025.
The painting of Íñigo Navarro (Madrid, 1977) seems to look more toward the gray skies and subdued lights of central and northern Europe than toward the pictorial tradition of his own land. His canvases echo echoes of Belgian artist Michaël Borremans, with portraits in which the boundary between dream and nightmare becomes blurred, like a barely holding veil. Also present are the influences of German artist Neo Rauch, a master of a magical realism where the historical intertwines with the everyday, and where traces of Soviet realism and the monumentality of Mexican muralism coexist without contradiction.
Perhaps because of this perspective rooted in multiple geographies, Navarro's career has flourished beyond Spain, unfolding across Europe in galleries in Germany, Denmark, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland, and extending to even more distant horizons: Japan, China, and Mexico. In all these territories, his work has conquered the art world with a voice as haunting as it is magnetic.
If I fly, my reflection sinks, Íñigo Navarro, 2025.
Under the title Yesterday a Tiger Trodden on Your Shadow , Íñigo Navarro opens his first institutional exhibition in Spain at the Lázaro Galdiano Museum. The exhibition, which oscillates between miracle and flight, takes as its starting point Goya's print "Mode of Flying"—a piece from the museum's collection that will also be on display in the gallery—to become a tribute to painting, "the definitive medium," as the artist himself often says.
In this journey, Navarro intertwines his work with the pictorial tradition of the Golden Age, while expanding it to include contemporary references in film, music, literature, and philosophy. While conceptually, his influences range across diverse geographies, technically, he returns to his homeland, drawing inspiration from the heritage of the great Spanish masters.
If there is one Spanish master with whom Íñigo Navarro's work connects not only formally and thematically, but also intimately, it is Francisco de Goya. The artist's first encounter with the Aragonese genius dates back to his childhood, when he closely observed the work of his mother, a restorer at the Prado Museum, as she worked on the painter's canvases. It was also in that space that his desire to become an artist was born, a longing that would take time to materialize, as after finishing high school, he began studying mathematics before deciding to abandon that path and fully dedicate himself to his true calling: the Fine Arts.
Today, it is Goya who once again acts as a bridge between the pieces in the Lázaro Galdiano Museum and Navarro's pictorial universe, uniting past and present in a dialogue of profound resonance.
