The incorporation of the work comes from the loan agreement between both institutions, conceived as a long-distance project to approach contemporary art to the university campus.
The Universitat de València exhibits the sculpture of Amélie III by Manolo Valdés, at the Tarongers campus. It is a work that belongs to the collection of the Institut Valencià d’Art Modern (IVAM) (Valencian Institute of Modern Art) that joins the REBROT project, the initiative promoted by both institutions to approach contemporary art –particularly the sculptural collection of the IVAM– to the university community.
The work, located at the entrance –at the exterior porticoed area of the Faculty of Teacher Training of the Universitat de València–, gives continuity to the loan agreement signed between the university and the IVAM, whose first phase came to fruition in December 2025 by settling eleven works distributed among the Blasco Ibáñez, Tarongers and Burjassot campuses. That selection gathered eight sculptures and three paintings of Alberto Corazón, Miquel Navarro, Juan Asensio, Juan Carlos Nadal, Andreu Alfaro and Juan Sanleón, lot of them restored after being affected by the 2024 DANA.
In addition, the UV and the IVAM are finishing the installation of four new large-format sculptures in the new garden areas of the Tarongers campus, previewed for the beginning of the next academic year.
One of the most recognised series of Manolo Valdés
Amélie III belongs to the Amélie series, a group of sculptures that Manolo Valdés developed at the beginning of the 2000s and that constitutes one of the most representative lines of his sculpture production. The series transfers a recurring motif in the work of the artist: the big feminine heads inspired in the European artistic tradition and, particularly, in the artistic universe of Henri Matisse.
Far from representing a specific character, the figure of Amélie works as an icon that allows Valdés to do research of the memory of arts, portrait, and the transformation of shapes. The sculptures are characterised by their monumental volumes, the simplification of facial features and the importance of the headdresses and textures, turned into essential elements of the composition.
When he presented this series in 2022, Valdés explained that several of the art pieces incorporated materials and objects recovered in New York, the city where he lived after the 11-S attack of 2001. This decision established a dialogue between tradition of portrait and contemporary materials. In that occasion, he defined Amélie as “the muse of Matisse”, a reference that sums up the conceptual origin of the series and the link of these sculptures with the archetypal of the French painter.