The Pamplona businessman Jesús Huarte has died in Madrid at the age of 100. Eldest son of Félix Huarte, creator of one of the great Spanish construction companies of the last century. Like his brothers Juan, Felipe and María Josefa, he contributed decisively to the modernization of various fields of our culture.
Owners of the Señorío de Sarría wineries, the Huartes’ first step in this modernization process was their support for ‘Papeles de Son Armadans’, Cela’s magazine, a great platform from which the future Nobel Prize winner promoted dialogue between the Spain of the interior, and that of exile. Later, the novelist would also be the first director of Alfaguara, the family publishing house.
In the field of architecture, the Huartes decidedly opted for the avant-garde. His company Muebles H was key in the development of modern furniture. His most emblematic achievement was the White Towers of Sáinz de Oiza. They also created the magazine ‘Nueva Forma’, which Juan Daniel Fullaondo would direct.
Always on the subject of architecture, but on a private level, Jesús and his first wife, María Luisa Giménez-Altolaguirre (with whom he had four children: Adriana, Cristina, África and Manuel), after initially residing in the Huarte de la Castellana building , by Felipe Heredero, in an apartment renovated by Vázquez Molezún and decorated by Francisco Capuleto, in 1966 they decided to commission a home on the edge of the La Coruña road, a little after Puerta de Hierro, to Vázquez Molezún, again, and to José Antonio Corrales. An extraordinary house, today in the DoCoMoMo, with spaces for works of art, among others by Oteiza, Carlos Ferreira or Lucio Muñoz. The one from Formentor was also very beautiful, signed by Luis Gutiérrez Soto, although later its new owner would learn that Corrales, his nephew and assistant, had been its true author.
Founded in 1965, the Alea electroacoustic music laboratory, directed by Luis de Pablo, was another of the Huartes’ cultural enterprises, from which in 1972 the Pamplona Encounters were organized, directed by the Bilbao composer and José Luis Alexanco, and in whose press department they enrolled the signer of these lines.
After being widowed in 1983, Jesús Huarte would remarry, in 1987, with the gallery owner Marta Moriarty, with whom he would have a son (Jon) and share new intellectual and artistic adventures. A great man of business and culture, he spent his last years traveling, reading, sailing, playing the piano, taking care of his Mallorcan garden designed by the Uruguayan Leandro Silva, and supporting his beloved Marta in the Slowtrack adventure. In its collection, to the artists already named, and others of a lifetime such as Solana, Zabaleta, Lobo, Cumella, Palazuelo, Raba, Moore or Rothko, others would be added: Ettore Sottsass, Gordillo, Carlos Franco, Pérez Villalta, Campano , Francis Alÿs, John Currin, Andy Goldsworthy…
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