Art, heritage and excellence

For the first time, a wide selection of historic jewels and contemporary creations by Suárez, one of Spain's leading houses, is displayed through an unprecedented dialogue between high jewellery pieces and some of the masterworks in the museum's collection.

Far from being a mere retrospective, visitors are invited to reflect on time, beauty and the craftsmanship of those objects that safeguard memory and are passed down from generation to generation.

The exhibition is a tribute to the work of master jewellers and to all the crafts that have accompanied Suárez's evolution since the opening of its first shop in Bilbao in 1943. Each of the pieces on display reflects the balance between artisanal excellence, respect for the raw material, innovation and knowledge handed down from generation to generation.

Sinfonía

Sinfonía is Suárez's new collection, created as the expression of a new chapter for the House. The collection springs from a reinterpretation of its legacy and projects Suárez's identity into the future through a renewed creative language.

Strata: a Sur Mesure creation for the Museo Lázaro Galdiano

As a testament to this dialogue between the Museo Lázaro Galdiano and Suárez, the exhibition presents Strata, a unique jewel created to join the museum's collection. A Sur Mesure piece that brings together tradition and contemporaneity and symbolises the shared will to preserve, enrich and transmit the value of beauty.

Inspired by the art déco aesthetic, the jewel establishes a link with Madrid and with the museum's history through a composition that evokes the geometry of the gardens and ponds of the Retiro Park. Two aquamarines reinterpret the ponds beside the Palacio de Cristal, while a succession of emeralds pays homage to the green of the gardens. The choice of aquamarine also takes on a special meaning, evoking Paula Florido, wife of José Lázaro Galdiano, for whom blue was the favourite colour.

A dialogue between two universal languages

Suárez's jewels converse with works by artists such as Sofonisba Anguissola, Juan Carreño de Miranda, Claudio Coello, Luis Paret, Federico de Madrazo and Raimundo de Madrazo, forging connections that reveal how jewellery has accompanied the evolution of art and of society through a shared gaze on beauty, symbol and identity.

Each encounter has been conceived to generate an artistic narrative that transcends aesthetic contemplation and places jewellery as a cultural expression capable of interpreting its time and preserving memory.

The route begins in the museum's Portico, the palace's original entrance, turned into a space of welcome for the visitor and a symbolic threshold between the gardens and the world of the exhibition. A large installation of wood, fabric and light, inspired by the cases that protect and transport works of art, introduces the story of Suárez's evolution. Presiding over this first encounter, the work Pescadora, by Alberto Arrúe, establishes a link with Suárez's origins and with Bilbao, the city where the firm was born. Around it, a selection of historic and newly created jewels is paired with gouaches, jewellery tools and workshop objects, bringing the visitor closer to the world of the craft and to the creative processes that make each piece possible. An ensemble that reveals how tradition and innovation, memory and contemporaneity have coexisted from the outset to shape a unique way of understanding high jewellery.

The journey continues on the first floor of the Museo Lázaro Galdiano, where the true dialogue between art and jewellery takes place. Each encounter offers new readings and reveals how the jewel, just as in the great portraits in the history of art, can complete an image and endow it with new meaning.

With this exhibition, the Museo Lázaro Galdiano and Suárez express the encounter between past and present, between craft and creation, between heritage and future.