Nicanor Piñole Museum

The Museum was created in 1991 to house the collection of paintings and drawings that Nicanor Piñole’s widow, Enriqueta Ceñal Costales, donated to the city of Gijón/Xixón.
Its main mission is the study, conservation and dissemination of the work of this artist, one of the main people responsible for the renewal of Asturian painting in the first third of the twentieth century.
The visit
The museum is located in the old Pola Asylum, an eclectic style building, designed in 1903 -1904 by Luis García Bellido and built by Miguel García de la Cruz. The permanent exhibition presents a wide selection of oil paintings, sketches, notes and drawings by Nicanor Piñole (Gijón, 1878-1978), following chronological and thematic criteria. Along with the most relevant works of his artistic career, personal objects and a wide selection of drawings are exhibited that offer an intimate vision of the artist and his family environment.
The collection
The museum’s collection is made up of the collection donated by the painter’s widow and the deposits of the Jovellanos Birthplace Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts of Asturias and the Reina Sofía National Art Centre Museum.
The collection includes all the genres that Piñole cultivated throughout his long artistic career, portraiture, mainly self-portraits and family portraits, landscapes, still lifes and scenes of a costumbrist nature, a theme in which he addresses the Asturian landscape and people in an original and innovative way.
An outstanding aspect of the museum’s collection are the more than five thousand drawings, sketches, notes, poster designs, illustrations, etc., which provide the fundamental keys to interpreting the creative process of this artist with a marked realistic vocation.
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The collection highlights the artist’s mastery of portraiture, a genre he cultivated throughout his artistic career. The more than three hundred self-portraits, in addition to the portraits of his mother and other members of his family, stand out for the psychological capture of the models and for the delicate gaze he projects on them. A selection of pieces can be seen in the Digital Network of Collections of the Museum of Spain. CER.ES
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Personal Items
The museum also has a series of personal objects of the artist, including his painting tools, the medals and recognition he receives throughout his career, the family’s photographic archive, his library and the furniture of his house.