ARCO enters the final stretch of its official opening on Wednesday for professionals with an edition in which you can find pieces such as ‘The Woman and the Bird’ from Joan Miró for 2 million eurosone of the most expensive pieces, and in which everything indicates that there will be no controversy.
ARCO 2023 officially opens its doors this Wednesday with the offer of 211 galleries -66% international-, but this Tuesday afternoon you could already see collectors and museum directors looking at the most succulent pieces. Antoni Tapies, Antonio Saura, José Guerrero, Fernándo Zobel, Rafa Macarrón, Juan Muñoz or Eduardo Chillida are some of the names that are repeated the most at the fair.
The Mayoral Gallery in Barcelona has brought what will probably be the most expensive piece of the fair: a painting by Joan Miró from the sixties that costs two million euros, but he has also brought other large pieces such as a bell by Antoni Tapies (300,000 euros) or a Rafa Macarrón for 270,000.
The gallery owner Jordi Mayoral is optimistic about the fair and believes that the feeling about the economy has changed for the better compared to a few months ago, an extreme in which other gallery owners consulted by EFE agree. In José de la Mano, whose most expensive piece is an Antonio Saura for 225,000 euros, the difference between the national collector, who is “more contained” and the international one, who is not so affected by the economic situation. Despite everything, he believes that “this year there is a high level.”
Proof of this is that this year international galleries return -which account for 66% of the fair- that for years did not set foot in Madrid. This is the case of the New Yorker David Zwirner, who in 2020 acquired the legacy of the Spanish Juan Muñoz and who has brought two sculptures from the Spanish at 800,000 and 850,000 euros each.
The controversial Eugenio Merino -who half signed Felipe VI’s ninot with Santiago Sierra and is the author of Franco in the fridge- brings this year a life-size Pablo Picasso sculpture in the ADN gallery, which also promises to attract media attention despite the fact that it is a 2017 piece, which was shown in Malaga a few years ago. It is an edition of three pieces, at 45,000 euros each, that the artist’s gallery has wanted to bring to the fair in line with the anniversary of the painter’s death, which is being celebrated this year, and which is just criticizing the instrumentalization of his listed for commercial purposes.
Also on the occasion of this anniversary, the artist Eugenio Ampudia proposes a piece in which has experimented with the painting of Guernica and has cut it into pieces until it becomes a refuge, for 50,000 euros, in the Max Estrella gallery. At the same stand you can see two pieces made with neon with the motto ‘Emosido deceived’ and a motto from the 15M ‘I fight for you too’ by Marco Godoy.
Juana de Aizpuru, the fair’s oldest gallery owner, arrives with a stand marked by the large format. His most expensive piece is a photograph of Wolfgang Tillmans for $350,000, a unique piece. But he also has works by Alberto García Alix, and by the brothers Markus and Albert Oehlen. De Aizpuru, considered the founder of ARCO, is convinced that in these 42 editions the fair has evolved in step with Spanish society. “It had its place, that’s why it has endured,” she said.
The Malborough Gallery brings one of the impressive pieces from the ‘Alfaguara’ series by Martin Chirino, for 575,000 euros, inspired by water and which presides over its space at ARCO, in a stand that dialogues with Soledad Sevilla, the Mexican Laura Anderson Barbata, Juan Genovés or Lucio Muñoz. There is also avant-garde art at the fair, Guillermo de Osma brings one of the few cubist pieces in this edition, a María Blanchard, for 220,000 euros.
The invasion of Ukraine, which came in the middle of the fair last year, made last season unusual, but everything points to an improvementhe admits, although the prices this year “are contained”, assures the collector.