The exhibition, curated by Ignacio Peiró, Professor of Contemporary History at the Universidad de Zaragoza, and by the journalist Rafael Bardají, is divided into four major sections: La educación de lamirada, El sentido del paisaje (The Education of Viewpoints, The Sense of Landscape); Profetas del saber, sacerdotes de la verdad (Prophets of Learning, Priests of Truth); Culturapolítica: República y regeneración de España (Political Culture: Republic and Regeneration of Spain) and Muerte y posteridad: memoria e historia de Joaquín Costa (Death and Posterity: Memory and History of Joaquín Costa). The presentation closes with a brief section entitled El triunfo de las ideas (The Triumph of Ideas).
181 pieces drawn from public institutions and private collections help recreate the different settings which served to forge Costa as a man, an intellectual and a politician. The materials on display include books, manuscripts, magazines and local, regional and national newspapers, photographs, drawings, graphics, sketches and objects identifying his person and context.
The exhibition is illustrated throughout by means of a painstaking selection of pictorial works by artists of the 19th and 20th centuries (Félix Lafuente, Juan José Gárate, Victoriano Balasanz, Ramón Acín, Ramón Martín Durbán, Natalio Bayo, La Hermandad Pictórica, Iñaki and José Luis Cano) and national figures (José Casado del Alisal, Ricardo de Madrazo, Vicente Cutanda, Francisco Lameyer, Ángel Díaz Domínguez, Darío Regoyos, Joaquín Sorolla and Ignacio Zuloaga), as well as sculptures (Honorio García Condoy and Félix Burriel), photographs, books, magazines, documents and a range of objects connected with this figure. The aim is thus to explore the way in which the Spanish panorama of the late 19th and early 20th centuries was depicted in painting and art, while also examining the reality of the era.
Two audiovisuals presenting images and records of the figure's different profiles and a carefully created catalogue with key specialists serve to round out a vision that allows us to discover and understand the complex of social and political changes and transformations which it fell to Joaquín Costa to experience.
