The artistic work of Eduardo Úrculo serves as a vehicle for promoting education and social inclusion in Valencia through the cultural mediation program of Fundación Bancaja. The didactic workshops linked to the exhibition ‘Eduardo Úrculo. A cosmopolitan traveler’, which can be visited until June 29, are tailored for students, people with disabilities, and individuals at risk of exclusion.
Over 2,100 beneficiaries of this program use the Spanish artist’s work as a means to develop cognitive, social, and inclusive skills. Fundación Bancaja conducts the ‘Barrier-free Workshop’, bringing together fifth and sixth grade students with groups of socially excluded individuals and people with disabilities.
Students from Colegio Sagrado Corazón – Carmelitas and CEIP Luis Vives in València collaborate with social entities in the city’s care center network. Prior to the workshop, monitors from Centro Ocupacional Luz Verde hold preparatory sessions at the schools and share this experience with social groups and centers during the activity.
Persons with disabilities and at-risk groups also engage in workshops centered on Úrculo’s work, starting with a video introduction by individuals with disabilities, selecting key artworks that illustrate the artist’s journey and artistic characteristics. Participants then focus on specific works like ‘Yoúre the one’ (1999) and ‘Lastres’ (1992), creating their own images using materials like charcoal, acrylic, and textured adhesives.
The individualized versions become diary covers, incorporating phrases related to the artist and their own experiences. Additionally, participants collaborate to recreate one of the artist’s iconic symbols, the umbrellas, on a smaller scale.
In the ‘SCHOOL WORKSHOPS’ section, students explore the exhibition with a suitcase, an iconic element in Úrculo’s work, using passports to reflect aspects of the artist’s work like abstraction, expressionist language, figurative elements, predominant colors, and key features of ‘pop art’. They engage in a creative exercise focused on perspective, using city landscapes as inspiration to understand depth, volume, and shadow projection on paper.
Fundación Bancaja’s various free workshops stimulate imagination, self-esteem, knowledge, teamwork, creativity, awareness, and psychomotor skills, providing cultural leisure spaces to those typically not exposed to such environments.
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