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ARCOmadrid 2019 opens its doors
27February
EventsSemana de Arte en Madrid

ARCOmadrid 2019 opens its doors

Madrid. Feb, 27- The first day of ARCOmadrid 2019 passed as it should: with Peruvian art as the protagonist. It has been of little use that Santiago Sierra tried to steal the role of the guest country. When talking about art, it is artistic quality that prevails and not politics.

And is not that I say it. the founder of ARCO and the current Minister of Culture endorsed it this morning. "It's spectacle, not art," José Guirao told the press, downplaying the "ninot" of the king with which Sierra and Eugenio Merino occupied the covers of yesterday. "A prank" that is "within reach of anyone", according to Juana de Aizpuru.

Sierra -who already starred in another similar episode last year with his work Presos Políticos ...-, "is not worthy to return" to ARCOmadrid", affirmed the gallerist to Europa Press. "I thought he was smarter, that he was capable of doing something subtler. It is not worthy of another gallery to bring him next year to put together another scandal ", pointed out De Aizpuru.

Anyway, when Mario Vargas Llosa appeared at noon to talk with Juan Manuel Bonet about the characters and events that have marked the Peruvian culture of the last decades, everything was forgotten. (A Nobel Prize for Literature vs. a National Prize for Plastic Arts - although rejected by Sierra in 2010, the Madrid artist is a transgressor ...)

At full capacity, Vargas Llosa recalled that glorious era -pre dictatorship-, in which Peru had a buoyant culture, while affirming that this is a country with many identities based on its many cultures: prehispanic, Hispanic, Asian ..., Like half Latin America!

In the middle of the afternoon, the institutional pavilion of Peru hosted the presentation of the program of exhibitions Peru in Arco, curated by Sharon Lerner and Fietta Jarque and that can be enjoyed in the pavilions of IFEMA and in many spaces of the Spanish capital, which these days It is flooded with Peruvian artists of all generations, styles and backgrounds.

 

Works by Peruvian Fernando Bryce
Works by Peruvian Fernando Bryce

 

Accompanied by Andean drinks and snacks, the attendees also took home some delicate bags designed by Elliot Tupac, whose "chichas posters" can be enjoyed at La Casa Encendida and in the Espacio de Igualdad Clara de Campoamor.

Then it was the turn of toast for the MALI-Museum of Art of Lima, whose Committee of Acquisitions has just received the A Prize for collecting, from the Arco Foundation.

Awards of the day

This first day was also propitious to deliver some of the institutional Awards of ARCOmadrid. The luxury watch brand Audemars Piguet recognized, in its seventh edition, the Italian artist Andrea Galvani, whose installations and performances tell us that "our nature can be understood through art".

Also, at the stand of the Marlborough Gallery, the 3rd Catalina de Anglade Prize was announced, which this year was for Luis Gordillo, one of the most recognized artists of the Spanish art scene of the second half of the XX century and what goes from the XXI.

His canvas "Paisajes por placas" will become part of the private collection of the designer and patron. The second phase of the award will be to carry out an ex rookie work that we will see next year here at ARCO, as Secundino Hernández has already done, which exposes his work at the Catalina stand.

 

Audemars Piguet Award
Audemars Piguet Award

 

Photos: @yricardo