Madrid,
The Reina Sofía Museum has announced today its acquisitions for the year about to end: 470 works by Spanish artists (among them Ángeles Santos, José Pérez Ocaña, Colita, Pilar Albarracín, Ana Laura Aláez, Carles Congost, Joan Morey and Cristina Lucas) and foreigners (among them, André Masson, Alice Rahon, Allan McCollum, Regina José Galindo, Miguel Ángel Rojas and Yasumasa Morimura). We have sought to incorporate women artists into the MNCARS funds, especially Spanish but not only: leaving aside the works acquired at auction whose only criterion, evidently, is the opportunity for release to the market and the urgency of their incorporation into public collections, they account for more than half – 56% – of the Ministry’s purchases for the Reina Sofía and the Museum itself.
The three ways in which the center has been increasing its collection are acquisitions with its own financial resources and the donation of works to this institution; acquisitions with resources from the Ministry of Culture, which include both purchases at the ARCOmadrid Fair and auctions approved by the Board for Qualification, Valuation and Exportation of Historical Heritage Assets; and the deposits of pieces at the Reina Sofía Museum Foundation, which correspond to both acquisitions and donations.
Along with the incorporation of women artists, or the improvement of the presence of those already integrated (Pilar Albarracín, Elena Mendizábal, Alicia Framis, Ana Laura Aláez, Susy Gómez, Cristina Lucas, Belén Uriel, Tamara Arroyo, Nieves Correa or Cabello/Carceller ), another of the lines of attention of the Reina Sofía in these new additions to its collection are the creators active in recent decades and until now not represented in its funds; In this sense, there are works by the aforementioned Joan Morey and Congost, and by Ramon Guillén-Balmes or Rubén Grilo.
A third line in these latest purchases has been the reinforcement of the artistic discourses that emerged during the Transition, in the seventies: the sculpture of Sergi Aguilar, the inflatables of Josep Ponsatí, the pop painting of Carme Aguadé and works of related authors arrive at the MNCARS to the countercultures of that time, such as José Pérez Ocaña, Carlos Forns Bada, Julujama, Roberto González Fernández, Zush or Colita, from whom a complete series has been acquired that It was exhibited in the Galeria Pecanis in Mexico, linked to the Spanish exile. Previous are three paintings made in the fifties, his last stage, by the Sevillian Helios Gómez: Woman with jug, dead and naked tree, Naked woman with wagon and Two naked women.
Attention to the immediate present and racial diversity can be seen in the purchases of creations by the Guinean artist residing in Spain “Pocho” Guimaraes and the Afro-descendant Spaniard Rubén H. Bermúdez; Latin America will gain weight in the Museum thanks to Ana Gallardo and Alicia Herrero, who resort to feminism and irony as tools to explain the material conditions of their careers and the traces of colonialism; of the Guatemalan Regina José Galindo, pioneer of body art put at the service of violence against women; and the Colombian Miguel Ángel Rojas, whose production denounces the living conditions in his country. Returning to Europe, Elisa Montessori, an Italian author who cultivates a poetics of nature embedded in the tradition of arte povera, arrives at the Reina Sofía.
Through auctions, the MNCARS has acquired pieces by the Cuban Antonia Eiriz, by the Spanish modern artists Carme Cortés i Lladó and Laura Albéniz or specific poems by Fernando Millán dated to the early seventies, while in the In terms of donations, we must highlight the one made by Juana de Aizpuru coinciding with the closure of her gallery, valued at approximately one and a half million euros and consisting, for the most part, by works by Spanish artists from the 1990s and early 2000s; also by historical pieces by contemporary Andalusian creators and by German painters and sculptors linked to this room since its beginnings in Seville in the seventies.
Concha Jerez, for its part, has donated the facility Identity of a geographical space – Plaza de Colón in Madrid through bureaucratic elements that identify its limits (1983-1986), with which he participated in the exhibition “Fuera de formato”, and Yasumasa Morimura has done the same with seventeen works, in turn coming from Juana de Aizpuru. Finally, the collector Juan Várez has donated Vision of Western painting (2002), by Fernando Bryce.
The Reina Sofía Library and Documentation Center has also increased its collections by almost 4,000 works through purchases, auctions, deposits and donations, in addition to receiving the donation of several archives and documentary collections worth close to 300,000 euros. . Among the donations of archives, we must highlight that of the artist Darío Villalba, which is added to that of the critic José Manuel Costa.
As for the Ministry of Culture, which has invested 1,137,798.45 euros in the acquisition of 139 works by 85 artists, its criteria have been based on the opportunity offered by the different auctions and the attention to artists of the historical avant-garde and modernity. He has obtained a nude of Joaquín Sunyer, The red roosters (1935) by André Masson or forest fire (1946) by the Mexican-based French surrealist Alice Rahon. Also with the Portrait of the Marchioness of Alquibla (1928), one of Ángeles’s first works
Santos, commissioned at the age of seventeen under the clear imprint of the New Objectivity; There are rare occasions to find works by this author for sale.
Other acquisitions correspond to the pioneer of abstraction Lola Bosshard, the figurative painters Esther Boix or Mari Puri Herrero, the vocabulary of modernity applied to educational contexts by Regina Giménez, the study of apparitionisms by Julia Montilla or the one on the moral consequences of the AIDS crisis by Ana Laura Aláez. Other incorporated authors are Sonia Navarro, who has been addressing textile work as a generator of community spaces and resistance for women; Eli Cortiñas, who makes evident his political commitment in the analysis of the cultural construction of the exotic in our visual culture; Núria Güell, and her commitment to transforming financial speculation; or the young sculptors Nora Aurrekoetxea, Sahatsa Jáuregui and Elena Alonso, new to the Reina Sofía; and another acquisition of the Ministry is a mural installation by the American Allan McCollum, composed of ninety drawings.
At auction, this institution has purchased a painting by María Moreno from 1972, a set of visual poetry pieces from the sixties and seventies or a photographic series by Laurent and James Clifford that captures the industrialization of the Spanish landscape at the end of the 19th century.
Finally, in the past year, the Reina Sofía Museum Foundation has acquired eighty works by approximately half of the artists with a value close to 2,750,000 euros: almost 90% donations. The contribution of an American private collector has allowed, as announced by the Museum, the acquisition of a painting by Julie Mehretu, Feminine in nine, part 4 (2023), from a series featuring African-American composer Julius Eastman. In addition, Mercedes Vilardell has contributed a work by Hal Fisher made up of twenty-four prints with carbon pigments, Mythological 2 (2023) by the Brazilian Denilson Baniwa and a sculpture-installation by the same artist, titled Amaáka (Coivara), Memory Capsule in Transit (2020); Alberto Cruz, a pencil drawing triptych by the Dominican Jorge Pineda, Paradises found; María Amalia León and the Eduardo León Jimenes Foundation, a set of sixteen documentary photographs by the New Zealander Bernard Diederich, an artist’s book by the Puerto Rican Consuelo Gotay, a set of Puerto Rican graphics and an installation by the Dominican Belkis Ramírez; Diana López and Herman Sifontes donate a set of eleven videos and thirty-four photobooks by Venezuelan artists; Silvia Gold and Hugo Sigman, a painting by the Uruguayan Pedro Figari; Mario Cader Frech, a video by Salvadoran Abigail Reyes; Sergio Butinof, two pieces of textile art by the Peruvian Gaudencia Yupari Quispe; Gabriel Calparsoro, eight woodcuts by the Brazilian J. Borges; Julia Borja, a piece by Salvadoran Camilo Minero; and Pilar Lladó, a set of four embroideries on fabric by the Pontos de Luta and Linhas do Horizonte collectives.
Regarding the purchases financed with the funds contributed annually by the members, the works acquired are by Djanira, Heitor dos Prazeres, Ayrson Heráclito, Gilvan Samico and the Retratistas do Morro collective. Since its formation twelve years ago, and together with its namesake in the United States, the Foundation’s joint contribution to MNCARS exceeds 27
million and a half euros.
