The Museum brings together a selection of nadais from Filgueira Valverde's great collection
The Museum of Pontevedra wants to be the star in the upcoming holidays. It will host, between December 3rd and January 24th, an attractive exhibition with a selection of nadais (Christmas cards) received by the former director of the museum, Xosé Filgueira Valverde, between 1936 and 1996. The exhibition will only include 400 of the more than 9,000 postcards from the Filgueira’s Collection, but will display "small jewels of art and Christmas lyrics", according to the curator Sabela Santos Filgueira. In the hall, there will also be three large nadais -selected from the ones that are on display- and reproduced in large size so that visitors can take a photo.
"Nadais. Filgueira Valverde's Collection" gathers part of the Christmas correspondence that the professor received throughout his life. It shows the large number of contacts that the versatile writer had not only with the Galician intellectuals but also with others from outside the region. Some of the senders of Christmas greetings include personalities from all spheres of culture, among them important figures in the world of literature. Some of them are Gerardo Diego, Torrente Ballester, Miguel Delibes, Camilo José Cela, Buero Vallejo and, in Galicia, Aquilino Iglesia Alvariño, Celso Emilio Ferreiro, Valentín Paz Andrade, Manuel María, Luz Pozo Garza, María Victoria Moreno, Ramón Piñeiro or Xesús Alonso Montero.
In the field of arts, it is worth mentioning José Sesto, Caruncho, Maruja Mallo, Carlos Sobrino, the sculptor Acuña, Xoán Piñeiro or Agustín Portela, among others. People from the music sector, politicians, publishers, architects, archaeologists and important institutions, counts and marquises, friends who had emigrated and academics, a wide variety of celebrities and figures who were once very famous and perhaps today have been completely forgotten.
The exhibition is aimed at highlighting a means of expression that was very popular from the end of the 19th century until the end of the 20th century, which is when its decline began with the extensive use of new technologies. It comprises three sections: one dedicated to plastic artists, where you can find nadais from architects, painters, sculptors and photographers; a second section including nadais written by Galician poets; and a brief and last part dedicated to music, with popular Christmas songs, poems by Xosé Díaz Jácome, or carols compiled by Iglesias Vilarelle for the Coral Polifónica (Polyphonic Choir).
Finally, to round off this exhibition, and so that the public can take photographs, the Museum has chosen and reproduced on a giant scale three of the postcards. The first one is intended for young people; the second for children and adults, and depicts a traditional Christmas scene; and the third has been chosen for those who celebrate Christmas and the holidays from a humanist and secular point of view.
