Arco sells Picasso’s “corpse” and turns his “Guernica” into a sanctuary

Error. It is a word that is repeated as a mantra by many gallerists participating in the 42nd edition of Arc. Optimism and a great desire to buy can be seen in everyone, especially among some big international collectors (400 of them were invited to the fair) who are waiting like manna. They trust them more than the atonic national market. In the offer from 2003, reason prevails, painting rules, and there are few scandalous and striking pieces. But there are, like corpse by Picasso and Guernica overlap.

The first two days of the fair are reserved for professionals and those VIP customers invited to make a miracle out of bread and squares. They will have at their disposal the works of more than a thousand creators distributed in 211 galleries, 66% of which are foreign. One of the most international editions of Arc in its history, without a guest country, dedicated to the Mediterranean and confidence in the recovering market.

The offer is for all budgets, from the 300 euros for which the Helga de Alvear gallery can buy graphic works by various authors to the 3.7 million euros that the Bilbao Carreras Múgica gallery is asking for the sculpture Chillida de 1998. It weighs 1,500 kilograms, is made of corten steel, untitled and comes from a private collection. Chillida, with another steel of 2.4 million and 80 kilograms in Guillermo de Osma (the door of freedom, 1983), is one of the stars of the fair alongside Miró. The mayor is asking for two million Femme et oiseau (1960). Leandro Navarro sells another piece by Miró for 1.6 million Tete aux trois cheveux a month ago1969 Cayón, with another Miró sculpture for 850,000 euros, asks for two million Spatial concept (1964), Lucio Fontana.

Prudence, safe values ​​and a certain restraint prevail in the term in which painting reigns, although there are spectacular sculptures by Juan Muñoz and Jaume Plense, and video and photography are almost anecdotal. Those sharp proposals that monopolize the spotlight and headlines every year are also rare.

current body

The most shocking piece is already five years old, the corpse of Picasso, lying in a navy shirt, beige pants and espadrilles, on a catafalque with his hands folded in his lap. Picasso died here It is located in the ADN gallery and is the work of Eugenio Merino, the master of provocation who put Franco in the refrigerator. Opportunistically, on the fiftieth anniversary of the death of the genius from Malaga, he brings his silicone Picasso. His gallery is asking 45,000 euros for the second work in a series of three he created in 2017. Merino adds Lorca and offers for 8,000 euros the poet’s death mask from the second series of three.

“Picasso’s anniversary serves to remember that his figure acts as a tourist attraction, causing gentrification in Málaga,” explains Miguel Ángel Sánchez, owner of the ADN gallery, “excited and optimistic about the large guest list.” In the neighboring Max Estrella Picasso is also a protagonist. Another Eugenio, Ampudia, built a cabin by creating his walls, ceiling and floors with panels cut from full-size models Guernica.

Picasso’s anti-war and universal canvas serves to create Refuge, hoping for a stand that costs 50,000 euros. “In the context of war, Guernica it is a total anti-war symbol,” says the gallerist. Next to him, Marco Godoy, a young artist who keeps the banner archive and put it together neon protest using the famous “Emoido cheated” meme. Another neon recreates the slogans from 15-M: «It’s worth it for you, Lucho». “I work with protest language and collect protest phrases so they don’t disappear,” says Godoy.

Muñoz on the rise

Among his contemporaries, the most valued is Juan Muñoz, who died in 2021. Whoever wants to take Muñoz’s piece offered by Elvira González, with her three smiling men hanging on the wall in silent dialogue, must pay one and a half million euros. The powerful David Zwirner gallery offered two sculptures by the renowned Madrid artist for 800,000 euros. Plensa is listed below with a €400,000 bronze in Lelong and a €325,000 wood in Senda.

Historical vanguards are once again setting standards and highest prices. Working with them is Jordi Mayoral, a permanent gallerist at the fair who also detects a “huge illusion”. In addition to the incredible two million soup by Miró, he is offering a bronze Tàpies bell from 1996 for 300,000 euros. “In seven years at the fair, we have never done badly. The feeling is that there is a great desire; that after so much uncertainty we are entering an optimistic dynamic,” he agrees with his colleagues.

“There is a lack of collectors,” says De Aizpur

The diagnosis is shared by Juana de Aizpuru, the founder of Arc and who enthusiastically returns to her competition. “I bring the large formats that are asked of me by South Americans who move to Spain and buy fabulous houses of two and three million euros,” admits the matriarch of retailers without complexities. “Collectors are missing and being replaced by these wealthy buyers,” he says.

He hopes that one of these noisy millionaires will get the most expensive piece of his booth, a huge photograph by Wolfgang Tillmans, for which he is asking 350,000 euros. Or a huge and colorful painting by Fede Guzman, three by two meters, titled the apotheosis of darkness and priced at 28,000, photographs by Alberto García-Alix for 16,000, and pieces by the brothers Markus and Albert Oehlen.

Adaptation

De Aizpuru believes that the fair survived “because it knew how to adapt and find its place”. “Arco has changed a lot, as has Spanish society in these four decades, but I always thought it was necessary and that it was here to stay. If it’s done with a good approach and it’s not a match, it has to work. And so it was,” congratulates Guillermo de Osma, another veteran colleague specializing in 20th-century masters who has been present at Arc for three decades and who also reveals the enthusiasm that flows through the fair.

“The war hit us, but the feeling is very good,” says the dealer of spectacular pieces such as the 2.4 million Chillida and the 1928 Léger. nature death, for which he is asking 900,000 euros. He is asking 220,000 euros for a rare painting from the short cubist period of Marija Blanchard. In front of him is a Picasso drawing from 1966. two naked womenestimated at 350,000 euros, and an early and huge drawing by Christ from 1973 estimated at 280,000.

Basque José de la Mano appears at Arco 2023 with a thematic proposal, Spain in 1957. It looks back on a crucial year in which abstraction and informality prevailed. He collected the works of Pablo Serrano, Néstor Barrenetxea and Antonio Saura, the most expensive on his stand, with a canvas of 225,000 euros. “I think this year there is a level, that it will be a very good edition. There are a lot of international collectors that we hope are buying, because the domestic market is pretty stagnant,” he says.

Olga Adelantado from Luis Adelantado, a gallery that has never missed a fair and shares optimism with her colleagues, expresses herself on the same track. Offers two works by Carmen Calvo for 25,000 (I have nothing to do or think) and 17,000 (My mother) euros and a great photo by Darío Villalba, Fight, for 50,000. “We detected great interest, good feelings and a lot of energy that we felt before coming to the fair”, he notes in his analysis.

The mighty Marlborough Gallery offers a stunning piece in the series alfaguara Martin Chirino for 575,000 euros, together with works by Soledad Sevilla, Mexican Laura Anderson Barbata, Juan Genovés and Lucio Muñoz.

From Ukraine with pain

For the first time, Arco acquires the Voloshyn gallery from Kyiv, which continued its activity in the capital of Ukraine despite the bombing. Located in the basement, the owners and clients used it as a refuge during the worst moments of the war. “We closed shortly after the invasion, but we reopened in March,” explains Anna Kopilova, the owner of the gallery.

This is the first time they have visited a fair of this style, and they will appear with the works of two young creators: Nikita Kadam and Mikola Ridny. The answer to Putin with anti-militaristic and pacifist slogans –Stop Putin, Gas embargo to Russia or Decolonize Russia– and the sublimity of democratic institutions and the flag of Ukraine connect the work of both artists. As much as the ubiquitous black that is in all his pieces, made during the war and sold between 2,000 and 7,000 euros.

Mikola left Kherson for Kiev, where he continued to work after the invasion. Nikita received a scholarship to stay in Berlin, from where he pays for some works that have roots in Ukrainian patriotism.