Madrid,
In January of the year we are about to end, and under the artistic direction of Julieta de Haro, CentroCentro premiered a new program dedicated primarily to artists currently working in Madrid, from Rafael Canogar to Almudena Lobera or Mar Solís.
Nearly a million people visited these exhibitions throughout 2025 and, for next year, this center dependent on the Madrid City Council is working on preparing twelve new exhibitions. The first will start on January 29 and will be focused on the drawings of the Valencian Ana Juan; reference in that field in our country.
Starting February 26, on the 1st floor of CentroCentro we can visit “Madrid Collects. 50 contemporary art collections”, which aims to recognize the essential role of the collector within the city’s artistic ecosystem. around fifty patron whose collections are mainly located in the capital have been invited to select two contemporary pieces from their collections: one of special personal value and another of recent acquisition. Through this selection, this exhibition aims to reveal the less visible ties that connect the collector with his works and propose a map of the different sensibilities and motivations that guide those who maintain the practice of collecting. We will contemplate a hundred works by national and international artists, in an open and diverse tour in techniques and formats. The project will be curated by Adrián Piera, along with an advisory committee formed by María de Corral, Joaquín Gallego, Rosina Gómez-Baeza, Julieta de Haro, Lorena Martínez de Corral and Lucía Ybarra.
The 2026 program at CentroCentro will also feature monographs by artists with a consolidated career who have not been able to see extensive exhibitions in Madrid, such as María Lara, who has synthesized abstraction, poetry and warm chromaticism in her creations. It will be from June to November. Already in October, the Palacio de Cibeles will also host the exhibition “Being an artist, being a designer”, an extensive retrospective of Cruz Novillo, one of the essential figures of Spanish design in the second half of the 20th century.
At the end of the year, with the exhibition dedicated to the work of Carlos Franco “Cracks, clouds and clearings”, curated by Liliana Ang, CentroCentro will continue the line already begun with the exhibitions by Rafael Canogar and Juan Navarro Baldeweg. In this case, this reference of Madrid figuration will offer an overview of his production, marked by a particular look at mythology, tarot and eastern religions.
In its desire to give visibility to mid-career creators with their first large-format individual exhibition in a public institution in Madrid, CentroCentro will also host “The Tempest. The Garden of Forking Paths”, which will highlight the expressive power of Avelino Sala in collaboration with LABoral. For its part, “Indómita Pintura”, by Juana González, will present the latest works of this author from La Mancha, in which she expands beyond painting and delves into pieces of a sculptural-installative nature. Castro Flórez will be your commissioner.
The work with space and a high scenographic load will also star in the exhibition “Sobre/Salto”, by the Argentine Laura Lio, curated by Rocío de la Villa, a project about the drastic change in the management of correspondence, communication and the exchange of objects in recent times.
The 2026 programming at CentroCentro will also incorporate a new space focused on mid-career artists: the EPICENTRO project. In this guest artist program, five creators will successively intervene in the central area of the Operations Courtyard of the Antonio Palacios building with an unprecedented large-format piece, conceived specifically for the place. Those chosen are Illán Argüello, María Oriza, José Quintanilla, Isabel Gómez Liebre and Carlos Cartaxo.
Finally, the work of the youngest artists can be seen in the proposal “But the instant-ya is a firefly that turns on and off”, a collective exhibition with works that, starting from the minimum and the fragmented, propose different politics of the sensitive; and Teresa Moro will present a proposal made expressly for the center, in which she will take our gaze to elements of studies by various authors from the Madrid scene.
CentroCentro will also host, during the summer, the 10th Biennial of Contemporary Art of the ONCE Foundation, under the title “The charm of illusion. A border between reality and perception” and curated by Antonella Montinaro.
