Museo Belas Artes

Galicia may be a beautiful place with its amazing coastline, green rolling hills, and unique architecture … but in A Coruña there is also a very nice Fine Arts Museum, Museo Belas Artes, just a few streets over from Fely’s. I spent a really lovely afternoon wandering around this museum, located in a “schizophrenic” building, one that is modern but built on the foundations and using parts of an older structure, in this case an old convent. Inside, it is mostly very modern with the exception of where the old windows and sitting nooks line the eastern wall.

I quite liked the mix in the collection: it is a nice blend of old masters through to modern art, much of it by regional artists or ones who were either born or lived and created in Galicia. One area, however, was a total surprise. A whole section of the museum is dedicated to the local ceramics company, Sargadelos, a company started by Antonio Raimundo Ibáñez in 1806 in the town of Cervo, near Lugo. You may remember I had written a little about their store when I wandered into it on one of my walks through A Coruña, and here in the museum I finally learned about their history, clearly a very important part of Galician identity. Seeing the evolution of designs was also a great lesson in history as they mirrored cultural and historical advancements over the years. Classical china doesn’t do much for me, to be honest, at least not as something I’d like to own, but the current and very appealing Sargadelos designs make me want to have whole sets of it. I have a suspicion I will be buying some in the future, and having it shipped of course, my suitcase just isn’t the type of transport these ceramics deserve.

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