History of the House

The House

Located in the municipality of Godella — just eight kilometres from Valencia and on the edge of the fertile plain that extends over the Valencian alluvial lowlands — the Casa Museo is a family home of the type known in Valencia as cases de poble a dos mans (traditional village houses with a central passageway). It is situated on the old carrer del Pí, running east-west along the highest and most distant part from the Moncada irrigation channel in the original nucleus of Godella. 

It is a single-storey house with a large central passageway, used to give access for farming carts and livestock to the rear courtyard, with rooms arranged on either side.

Ignacio Pinazo Camarlench and Teresa Martínez Monfort acquired this house on 24 September 1887 and in December of the same year extended the plot to the rear, with the acquisition and addition of the land located to the south. In January 1888 they began renovation and extension works, adding a gallery that increased the living space. At the same time they began construction of the painter’s studio and, below it, a semi-basement or cellar, initially used for children’s theatre performances, an activity then common in the municipality of Godella. The works were completed in September 1889.

The studio is a self-contained architectural piece, of refined classical design, raised above ground level, of remarkable height and lit by large north-facing windows.

From the beginning of the twentieth century, the house in Godella became the family’s sole residence. Both Ignacio and Teresa died there, in 1916 and 1919 respectively.

In 1940, following the appropriate division of the estate of the painter Pinazo Camarlench, the house in Godella was awarded to his son, the sculptor Ignacio Pinazo Martínez.

Following the death of Ignacio Pinazo Martínez in 1970, his only daughter Esperanza Pinazo, with the close collaboration of her husband, the architect Eugenio Casar Estellés (Godella, 1922 – Madrid, 1978), decided to establish a Casa Museo in the family home, following the model promoted in the early twentieth century by the Marqués de la Vega-Inclán, as a place of memory for its original inhabitants. The founding condition was that the house should continue to be used by the family’s descendants, so that it would retain its domestic character and incorporate the traces and testimonies of its inhabitants, with a sense of living continuity essential to the institution. Eugenio and Esperanza thus fulfilled the wishes expressed by Ignacio Pinazo Martínez in his first will of 1924, and appointed Ricardo García de Vargas, a family friend since the 1930s, as director of the institution.

Furthermore, the foundation of 1971 was also based on an intensive and respectful restoration of the building, which involved the preparation of a first catalogue of the collection, covering mainly the works on display.

The museological configuration of the Casa Museo was thus shaped by the organisational decisions proposed by the sculptor Pinazo Martínez, although some rationalisation measures were already taken to facilitate the understanding of the different collections: the works of Pinazo Camarlench were displayed in all rooms except in those known as the Gallery — which housed the small pictorial collection of José Pinazo — and in the semi-basement or Cellar beneath the painter’s studio, which was devoted to the sculpture and graphic works of his sculptor son.

In 2004, further improvement works were carried out at the Casa Museo, leading to a new reorganization of the artistic collections, so that the works of José and Ignacio Pinazo Martínez came to be displayed mainly in the Cellar, a space that was also upgraded. This was done without preventing the sculptural pieces of Pinazo Martínez from coexisting with the paintings of Pinazo Camarlench throughout the other rooms of the house, without creating any confusion over authorship.