(1953-2001)

Prematurely and at one of the finest moments of his prolific career, Juan Muñoz passed away, on account of an aneurysm, in his summer house in Ibiza. Just months before he had inaugurated Double Bind, an ‘architectural’ installation whose labyrinthian spaces and contemporary schizophrenia proposed a dialogue between his characteristic anonymous figures in the turbine room of the Tate Modern of London, his adopted city since the eighties when a grant from the British Council allowed him to further his studies there. He did not consider himself a Spanish artist and was very critical of Spanish institutions dedicated to avant-garde art. But his intallations featuring sentries, dwarfs, Chinese figures and dancers were displayed in retrospective exhibitions in the IVAM (1992), the Galician Center of Contemporary Art (1995), and the Reina Sofía Museum (1996). Winner of the 2000 National Prize for Plastic Arts, the Madrid-born artist, married to the sculptress Cristina Iglesias, was also interested in drawing, literature, music, film or radio, and he would undertake projects in collaboration with other artists.