She transformed them into something else entirely: a sculptural language
A century after her birth, Aurèlia Muñoz receives her most complete institutional reckoning at Madrid's Museo Reina Sofía — a recognition long deferred by the very categories her work quietly dismantled. For decades, she labored with rope and fiber, materials the art world assigned to domesticity rather than sculpture, and transformed them into a rigorous spatial language that anticipated concerns contemporary art is still working through. The retrospective 'Entes' is not merely a celebration; it is a correction, an acknowledgment that the boundaries once used to contain her were always insufficient.
- For much of the twentieth century, Muñoz's textile sculptures were held at arm's length by institutions that could not reconcile fiber and knot with the seriousness they reserved for bronze and marble.
- Her macramé installations, flying books, and kite-birds refused the passive role assigned to decorative art — they occupied and restructured gallery space, pulling viewers into an awareness of their own bodies moving through air and light.
- The centennial retrospective at Spain's premier modern art museum gathers the full arc of her practice, making visible an evolution of thinking that was always rigorous but rarely recognized as such.
- What once read as marginality — her insistence on humble materials, her distance from institutional validation — now reads as prescience, placing her ahead of sculptural conversations that would only catch up to her later.
- The Reina Sofía's commitment to this exhibition signals a broader institutional reckoning with how gendered assumptions about craft distorted the art historical record for an entire generation of artists.
The Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid has mounted a landmark retrospective of Aurèlia Muñoz, gathering the full arc of a career that spent decades resisting the categories imposed upon it. Muñoz worked in textile and fiber at a time when those materials carried associations that were difficult to escape — craft rather than art, domestic labor rather than serious practice. She never accepted that boundary. Instead, she developed a formal vocabulary of knotting and weaving that operated at monumental scale, creating works that demanded to be understood as sculpture in the fullest sense.
The exhibition, titled 'Entes,' immerses visitors in installations that actively negotiate with the architecture around them. Macramé pieces create volumes and voids that shift as you move through them. Suspended flying books introduce weightlessness. The pájaros-cometa — kite-birds — weave themselves into the corners and walls of the gallery, refusing to stay still or contained. These works do not decorate space; they restructure it, making viewers conscious of air, light, and their own presence.
For much of the twentieth century, Muñoz occupied an institutional limbo, her materials too easily dismissed, her ambitions too easily overlooked. What emerges from this retrospective is a body of work that anticipated many of the questions contemporary sculpture would later take up: the viewer's body as part of the work, material as conceptual argument, space as something to be created rather than filled. The Reina Sofía's decision to mount this exhibition a hundred years after her birth is a significant acknowledgment — that the old categories were always wrong, and that her work has finally found the institutional home it deserved.
The Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid has mounted what may be the most comprehensive exhibition yet of Aurèlia Muñoz's work, marking the centennial of an artist whose career defied the narrow categories that once confined her. Muñoz spent decades working in textile and fiber—materials historically dismissed as women's crafts, domestic labor, the decorative arts. She transformed them into something else entirely: a sculptural language that reshaped how three-dimensional space could be inhabited and understood.
The retrospective, titled "Entes," gathers the full arc of her practice. Walking through the galleries, visitors encounter macramé installations that seem to breathe, their knotted fibers creating volumes and voids that shift depending on where you stand. There are flying books—suspended, weightless—and what the artist called pájaros-cometa, kite-birds that don't sit passively on walls or pedestals but actively weave themselves into the architecture of the room. These works don't decorate space; they negotiate with it, reshape it, make the viewer aware of air and light and their own body moving through the room.
For much of the twentieth century, Muñoz's work existed in a kind of institutional limbo. The materials she chose—rope, thread, fiber—carried associations that were hard to shake. Craft, not art. Women's work, not serious work. The distinction mattered enormously in the museum world of her era. But Muñoz never accepted that boundary. She developed a rigorous formal vocabulary, worked at monumental scale, and created pieces that demanded to be understood as sculpture in the fullest sense. The Reina Sofía's decision to mount this retrospective now, a hundred years after her birth, represents a significant institutional acknowledgment that the old categories were always wrong.
The exhibition draws together works spanning decades, showing the evolution of her thinking about how fiber could structure space, how knotting and weaving could become a kind of drawing in three dimensions. Her pieces interact with the gallery itself—they use its walls, its corners, its light. A macramé installation might span an entire room, creating a kind of woven architecture that visitors move through rather than simply observe. The flying books and kite-birds introduce an element of movement, of flight, of things that refuse to stay still or contained.
What emerges from the retrospective is a body of work that was always ahead of its time, that anticipated many of the concerns contemporary sculpture would later take up: the relationship between material and form, the role of the viewer's body in completing the work, the possibility of creating space rather than simply filling it. Muñoz's insistence on working with humble materials—the very thing that once kept her work at the margins—now reads as a kind of prescience. She understood that sculpture didn't need to be bronze or marble to be monumental, that fiber and knot could carry as much conceptual weight as any traditional medium. The centennial exhibition at Spain's most important modern art museum signals that her work has finally found the institutional home it deserved all along.
La Conversación del Hearth Otra perspectiva de la historia
Why did it take a hundred years for a major museum to give her a retrospective of this scale?
The materials she chose were the problem. Fiber, macramé, rope—these things had been coded as women's domestic work for centuries. Even when she was making monumental sculptures, the art world couldn't quite see them as sculpture. It was a category problem, not a quality problem.
But she was working during the twentieth century, when abstraction and formal innovation were being celebrated everywhere.
Yes, and that's the tragedy of it. She was doing exactly what the avant-garde was doing—investigating how form could structure space, how materials could be pushed into new configurations. But because she was using fiber instead of steel or stone, she stayed on the margins. The work was always there. The institutions just weren't looking.
What changes when you see a kite-bird or a flying book in a gallery space?
You become aware of the air around it. You become aware of your own body moving through the room. These pieces don't sit passively. They activate the space. They make you understand that sculpture isn't just an object you look at—it's something you move through, something that changes depending on where you stand.
Is this exhibition a correction, then?
It's an acknowledgment that the old boundaries were always artificial. Muñoz never accepted them. She just kept working, kept developing her language. The retrospective is the museum finally catching up to what she already knew.