Sevilla | On view
AVE DOÑANA II
El Paisaje
2025-2026
META Miami presents:
AVE Doñana II
Artistic residencies, exhibitions, educational activities, art and science.
The AVE Doñana Project, an international platform uniting art, science, and environmental conservation, inaugurates its 2025–2026 season with an ambitious new program of exhibitions, talks, and educational initiatives.
The AVE Doñana Project traces its origins to the historic connection between the Doñana Biological Reserve in Spain and Hato El Frío in Venezuela, where, during the 1970s, scientists such as Javier Castroviejo and Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente carried out pioneering research on biodiversity.
Decades later, this legacy inspired Milagros Maldonado, president of META Miami, to reimagine that spirit of collaboration between art and science, transforming it into a 21st-century platform for ecological awareness and cultural exchange.
Building on the success of its 2024 inaugural edition—which attracted more than 17,000 visitors—the project’s new season reaffirms its commitment to dialogue, education, and environmental conservation through the transformative power of art.
The Project
Conceived over a three-year period, the project has been developed in close collaboration with the Doñana Biological Station (CSIC) and the Foundation for Biodiversity (MITECO). Its curatorial vision centers on an artist-in-residence program within the Doñana Reserve, offering a contemporary artist the opportunity to experience firsthand the region’s extraordinary biodiversity and ecosystems. The residency encourages the artist to translate this immersive encounter into a creative process that both interprets and communicates Doñana’s essence within the broader international art context.
Since its inception, the AVE Doñana Project has established itself as a pioneering platform at the intersection of art, science, and environmental consciousness. Through a dynamic combination of artist residencies, scientific collaboration, and cultural dialogue, the project fosters innovative ways to perceive and protect the natural world.
The 2025–2026 program further expands this mission through an ambitious series of exhibitions, lectures, film screenings, and educational initiatives, underscoring the deep interconnections between artistic practice, scientific inquiry, and ecological reflection.
The exhibitions of the project:
Adrián Pujol
Genius Loci, Doñana a la intemperie
This season, the project kicks off with the exhibition Genius Loci: Doñana a la Intemperie by Adrián Pujol, running from October 29, 2025, to March 19, 2026, at the Fundación Biodiversidad (MITECO), located at Patio de Banderas 16, Seville. The show features fourteen works—eight paintings and six watercolors—created during a residency in Doñana National Park, where the artist collaborated with scientists from the Doñana Biological Station–CSIC.
Adrián Pujol working at the site.
“A lot is happening. Truly, a lot — on many levels. That’s how it always is in Doñana. It rains, and on the water of the Caño, thousands of circles appear. They form and fade endlessly, infinite. Adrián’s painting battles the elements. Rivers of rain run across it, like the channels that cut through the land around him. Doñana paints and erases it, gives and takes away.”
Noé Garrido
Adrián Pujol. El Alcornoque 206, 2025. Acrylic on canvas. 120 x 200 cm
Adrián Pujol (Palma, 1948) transforms painting into a form of environmental observation. Working directly in the open air in locations such as Martinazo, Santa Olalla, and Caño del Sopetón, Pujol exposes his canvases to the elements—wind, rain, and sunlight—allowing the natural forces of Doñana to participate in the painting process. As Pujol explains, “Painting in Doñana means accepting the intrusion of the unpredictable—the impossibility of control.” Art critic Joventino Reverte characterizes Pujol's work as “a moment where painting ceases to be mere representation and becomes an event: Doñana imposes its rhythm and transforms the painter’s gaze, revealing its true genius loci—the spirit of place.” Curators Milagros Maldonado and Henrique Faria highlight the project as “a profound encounter between creation and nature, where the landscape is not merely depicted but actively participates.”.
Adrián Pujol. La casa de Martinazo desde el zacallón de los caballos, 2025. Acrylic on canvas. 106 x 200 cm
The exhibitions of the project:
Carmen Laffón
Línea de Horizonte
The second exhibition of this year's project is Línea de Horizonte by Carmen Laffón, running from November 5, 2025, to March 19, 2026, at the Fundación Biodiversidad (MITECO), located at Patio de Banderas 16, Seville. The show features 21 works—5 oil paintings and 16 pastels— inspired by Doñana.
Carmen Laffón. Vista del Coto II. 2021. Gouache and charcoal on canvas. 110 x 200 cm
“Carmen Laffón dedicated much of her work to Doñana, viewed from her house in La Jara, on the edge of the old Corral de Merlín. Inspired by the simplicity of the horizon, the sky, and the land, she transformed that landscape into a laboratory of light and color. Her painting, minimalist and meditative, oscillates between panoramic grandeur and gestural restraint, exploring the nuances that the tides, the atmosphere, and the changing light imprint on the reserve.”
Daniel Bilbao
Carmen Laffón. Mar abierto III, 1992. Oil on canvas. 72,5 x 120 cm. Photo ©Claudio del Campo
Ultimately, the artist succeeds in turning the everyday landscape into an aesthetic experience, presenting a poetic and almost alchemical vision of Doñana, elevated in the horizon line she gazed at until the end of her life…
Daniel Bilbao
Carmen Laffón. El Coto desde Sanlúcar VI, 1989-92. Oil on canvas. 72,5 x 120 cm
