Centro de Arte y Naturaleza, Fundación Beulas.

Promoted by the painter José Beulas in 1999 it was founded in collaboration between private and public sector (ENATE winery and Aragon Regional Government, Huesca Provincial Council and City Council).Fundación Beulas manages the Centre of Art and Nature (Centro de Arte y Naturaleza – CDAN) as an institution of international reference in contemporary art research in relation with architecture, landscape and nature. The Centre of Art and Nature (CDAN) is located in Huesca, a city of 54.000 inhabitants in the North of the Aragon region (Spain), territory border with France and firmly committed to developing cultural policies and European cooperation. In this context, the Centre offers a regular activities programme based on its double art collection referred to landscape and new perspectives on nature, public space, artistic creation, contemporary society and cultural changes produced by technology. With singular and universal vocation, CDAN collaborates with different art institutions whereby it promotes creative and managerial exchanges: Château de Pau (France), Parco di Arte Vivente (Italy), Zollverein Kunst (Germany), Montanha Mágica (Portugal), MUSAC, Fundación Cerezales and Fundación César Manrique (Spain), among others. In addition to its own artistic activity, the CDAN has an outstanding documentation and research centre (INDOC), with more than 6.000 specialised documents, that serves a community of 2.000 researchers from all over the world -mainly European and Latinamerican-. Also, special courses and seminars on art, nature and landscape are developed with their related publications. For instance, in 2019, it organised the course “Art and nature in the rural areas: Culture ahead of climate change” with the Menendez Pelayo International University. http://www.cdan.es/arte-y-naturaleza-en-el-medio-rural-con-la-uimp/ Furthermore, the Fundación Beulas- Centre of Art and Nature (CDAN) has a Training Department that collaborates with different initiatives linked to social inclusion within European cross-border programmes and frameworks like Interreg or the Pyrenees-Mediterranean Euroregion. In 2019, the Foundation hostedd the 1st Transboundary Art and Disability Seminar. Also in that year, it held the Art, Architecture and Childhood workshop at Jorge Raedo’s expense, Art Director of Ludantia International Biennial of Architecture Education for the childhood and youth. The CDAN Training Department organised together with their counterparts in other European art centres the II Special Education and Contemporary Art Seminar, celebrated in 2009. The Fundación Beulas- Centre of Art and Nature (CDAN) also manages the painter’s José Beulas (1921-2017) property, which now belongs to the City Council. The artist’s estate has been restored as an open place for the citizens. It is a greenspace of 60.000 m² with three buildings. The most important of these is the exhibition space, a contemporary building designed by Rafael Moneo (Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1996, European Prize for Contemporary Architecture – Mies van der Rohe in 2001 and Golden Lion in Venice Biennale 2021). This building emerges as an island surrounded by vineyards and integrated into the local landscape through its shape and colours, reminiscent of mountains nearby. The place also has two houses, one of them designed by José María García de Paredes in 1969 (National Prize of Architecture in 1956) and the other one by local Architect Victorián Benosa in 1979.

The Fundación Beulas- Centre of Art and Nature (CDAN) works according to three fields of study:

1. Art-nature-landscape.
2. Climate change.
3. Demographic challenges in rural areas.

By means of different cultural and creative initiative, we try to break the boundaries between the urban and the rural, the local and the global. Throughout our specialization on Nature and Landscape, we generate a value flow between Art and Knowledge to think about solutions for climate problems and a contemporary ’society’s way of life’ more aware of the concerns of future generations. Via CDAN, Fundación Beulas develops the following actions:

1. A permanent site-specific art collection, embraced with Land Art, sitted on the whole territory of the Province of Huesca. It holds pieces by international artists as Richard Long, Ulrich Rückriem, Siah Armajani, Fernando Casás, David Nash, Alberto Carneiro and Per Kirkeby. These structures stimulate new visions of environment and landscape. http://www.cdan.es/arte-y-naturaleza/
2. Contemporary art exhibitions focused on the value of relationships between human beings, nature, landscape and climate change. On their behalf, the centre has edited and produced catalogues considered as referent as “La construcción del paisaje contemporáneo” or “Botánica: After Humboldt”.
3. The INDOC (research, documentation and cooperation centre), specialised in Art, landscape architecture and ecology, is a partner of “RECIDA” (Environmental Research Centres Network) and “El Cubo Verde” (Art Spaces in the Rural Area Network). It has almost 2000 associate members from several countries and disciplines (Fine Arts, Architecture, landscape design, environmental studies, Geography, etc.). As a result, researches carried out are applied in the cooperation field, where INDOC has an orientation on project working, artistic residencies in the rural areas (Fundación 3 piedras, Fundación Hospital de Benasque, Festival Lo Mon Contemporáneo) that work from the sustainability point of view. Moreover, INDOC has organized courses such as “Arte y naturaleza en el medio rural: cultura ante el cambio climático” (“Art and nature in the rural area: Culture ahead of climate change”) (2019) or the lecture “Del territorio al paisaje. Algunos referentes de espacios de arte y naturaleza en Europa” (“From territory to landscape. Some art and nature referential spaces in Europe”) within the framework of The International Meeting of heritage policies: culture, territory and heritage in 2021. In 2021, within Interreg “Mind the gap-MIGAP”, INDOC took part in the open collaborative project “Nuestro Río -Our River” managed by the architecture group Zerclo Patrimonio Cultural and local communities in the small village of Loarre, which work on cultural and environmental values involvement. Thanks to INDOC, the Fundación Beulas- CDAN has built a whole international community of multidisciplinary researchers, who interact throughout a newsletter or information pills -which put them in contact with European organisations working in the same fields of interest-. In recent years, INDOC has shared knowledge from projects such as Estuaire (France), Zollverein Kunst (Germany), PAV-Parco di Arte Vivente (Italy), Montanha Mágica (Portugal), Abbaye de l’Escaladieu (France) o SMACH (Italy), among others. Finally, the INDOC produces radio programs on environmental Art.
4. Specialised education program about Art, nature, landscape, architecture, As of its first edition entitled “Art and Nature”, from which publications like “In the city, “Garden as Art”, “Public Art” arose, the CDAN has developed the second edition of five years “Thinking the Landscape” connecting this concept with Art, Philosophy, History, Heritage and Territory. Many remarkable professionals have participated: Collette Garraud, Gillo Dorfles, Raffaele Milani, Jean-Marc Besse, Augustin Berque, Lisa Diedrich, Javier Maderuelo o Aurora Carapinha, among others. Therefore, the aim was to put together knowledge to build up learning communities on the subject of landscape.
5. A didactic programme on Art, nature, landscape and architecture that connects communities through workshops, activities and meetings for collectives, with particular attention to those at risk of exclusiOn. The program establishes participation in a bottom–up way processes with its users in the definition of public spaces. We could also highlight the workshops for children on Architecture, Art, Landscape and Botanics. The Training Department has been collaborating in a crossborder European project in the frame of Pyrenees-Mediterranean Euroregion: “Contemporary art and special education” with the Centre d’Art La Panera, Es Baluard y el Centre Régional d’Art Contemporain en Séte (France).

At last, the Fundación Beulas- Centre of Art and Nature (CDAN) signs conventions with other social organisations for inserting disabled people into the labour market.