Masters of art in the heart of luxury

Museum directors from all over the world would kill to get their hands on some of the works kept by the Opera Gallery. This multinational contemporary art store opens its headquarters in Madrid, in the heart of luxury, in the Salamanca district, with an incredible offer. Spectacular works by the masters of modern art, from Picasso and Miró to Andy Warhol or Léger, including Chagall, Calder, Appel, Roy Lichtenstein, Frank Stella, Yves Klein, Keith Haring, Alex Katz, Manolo Valdés, Genovés, Saura, Boter, Barcelo, Lita Cabellut and infinite etc.

In Madrid’s Serrano street, in the middle of the golden mile of fashion and luxury, the exhibition opens a space of one thousand square meters i love picasso in which the works of great creators dialogue with the works of the genius from Malaga on the fiftieth anniversary of his death. Giles Dyan (Tunis, 1960), a Frenchman living in Singapore, runs this emporium with 16 galleries on three continents.

Founded 27 years ago, it has offices in Paris, London, New York, Geneva, Monaco, Miami, Aspen, Singapore, Dubai, Hong Kong, Seoul and Beirut. It was the Spaniard Manolo Valdés who convinced the powerful gallerist to open a space in Madrid. Dyan does not hide that it was “the right time for it”, now that the great Latin American riches, especially Venezuelan, Peruvian, Chilean and Mexican, are arriving in the capital of Spain, eager for art and high paying power.

And to take home some of the sixty pieces that the Opera Gallery is exhibiting in its inaugural exhibition in Spain, you need to have a well-fed checkbook. In this new sanctuary of contemporary art, which will be the envy of even the world’s best museums, the cheapest piece costs 20,000 euros, and the most expensive exceeds ten million.

Botero painting by Picasso

double-sided in pinka monumental painting by Manolo Valdés and Picasso’s inspiration and a spectacular portrait of Picasso painted by Fernando Botero, inspired by a photograph by Brassaï, welcome the viewer in a sumptuous space with seven rooms on three floors designed by Hernández studio Architects.

There are half a dozen works by the genius from Malaga, as many sculptures by Valdés, Keith Haring larger than three by two meters or a rare work by the Japanese Yayoi Kusama. Only one work is not for sale, a small Genovese inspired by Picasso that was on display for just a few hours in the Antonio Machado bookstore in Madrid in the 1960s, an exhibition that was closed due to harassment by the extreme right.

Opera Gallery is moving to Spain to take advantage of the sweet moment in the market and compete with Marlborough, a leader in the competitive contemporary art trade sector. Unsurprisingly, Dyan has signed Belén Herrera, who has been responsible for the British gallery for two decades, as director of its Spanish headquarters, taking over the exclusive rights of the late Juan Genovés.

“In the last eight years, there has been a global fever for buying art as a safe asset, and we want to offer the best of the 20th and 21st centuries and meet this growing demand,” admits Dyan. “We intend to change the story of galleries and demand the international from the local,” summarizes the dealer. “We present the contemporary artists we love most together with the masters of the avant-garde, but we don’t have many of them exclusively,” he admits.