We have everything ready to celebrate the 15th anniversary of Art Madrid! The most festive and dynamic edition is ready to open its doors and celebrate contemporary art in style. Painting, photography, sculpture, video art, performance and artistic meetings make up the most extensive and varied programme of Art Madrid to date.

In this edition, Art Madrid is defined by its open and immersive character. An event full of movement where besides enjoying a wide program of exhibitors with an outstanding international perspective we will have an intensive program dedicated to new media, action art and performance thanks to the collaboration with the video art platform PROYECTOR and under the curatorship of its director, Mario Gutiérrez Cru.

Mario Soria

Mind genius, 2019

Óleo sobre madera y juguetes de plástico

98 x 27cm

Jorg Karg

Surrender, 2017

Printing by pigment under acrylic glass on aluminum dibond

80 x 80cm

This year Art Madrid has incorporated new national and international galleries. With a marked global commitment, Art Madrid counts for the first time with the Parisian Galerie LJ and the Italian Galleria Stefano Forni in Bologna. The German presence also stands out with the incorporation of Urban Spree (Berlin) and Luisa Catucci Gallery (Berlin) and the special Austrian participation of Offspace | galerie panoptikum (Gilgenberg). From the other side of the ocean lands the Ecuadorian gallery Más ARTE Galería (Quito). In the national participation, important exhibitors such as N2 and Pigment Gallery from Barcelona, as well as es.Arte Gallery, from Malaga, representing the south of the peninsula, will make their debut.

Art Madrid continues its commitment to national galleries that have already shown great weight at the fair and that could not be missed with their new proposals for this 15th edition: Madrid's Galería Kreisler, Marita Segovia, Soraya Cartategui, Galería BAT Alberto Cornejo and Galería Hispánica Contemporánea. From Asturias, Aurora Vigil-Escalera (Gijón), Bea Villamarín (Gijón) and Arancha Osoro (Oviedo). Luisa Pita (Santiago de Compostela) and Moret Art (A Coruña) in Galicia and Espiral Gallery (Noja, Cantabria) in the north of Spain, Kurt Art Gallery (Guipúzcoa) and Rodrigo Juarranz (Aranda de Duero, Burgos). From Barcelona 3 Punts, Miquel Alzueta, Víctor Lope Arte Contemporáneo and Zielinsky, as well as from Valencia the new proposals of Alba Cabrera Gallery and Shiras Galería.

Mari Quiñonero

No.130, 2018

Pastel sobre papel

60 x 42cm

Onay Rosquet

Tuesday, 2018

Oil on canvas

80 x 80cm

The Portuguese galleries Art Lounge (Lisbon), Paulo Nunes-Arte Contemporânea (Vila Franca de Xira), Galeria São Mamede (Lisbon/Oporto) and Nuno Sacramento (Ílhavo) stand out in the representation of foreign galleries renewing their participation in Art Madrid. From Germany he returns to Schmalfuss (Berlin) and the French Galerie Norty (Carrières-sur-Seine). And the Taiwanese Yiri Arts (Taipei) and the Cuban Collage Habana (Havana) could not miss this 15th anniversary celebration.

In such a special edition, Art Madrid has decided to redefine and expand the curatorial program One Project to transform it into a place of friction and artistic stimulus. Under the title "Salvajes. La cage aux fauves" and under the curatorship of Fernando Gómez de la Cuesta, One Project will consist of the work of 9 artists who work on contemporary creation from different perspectives, presenting new and specific projects for the fair. One Project will be formed by ATC Gallery from Santa Cruz de Tenerife representing Nicolás Laiz and Alona Harpaz; Kaplan Projects from Palma, with the artists Juan Carlos Batista and Santiago Palenzuela; MA Arte Contemporáneo also from Palma, with the work of Andrés Planas, and Plastic Murs from Valencia, with the work of Pichiavo and Julio Anaya and DDR Art Gallery from Madrid, on this occasion with the new sculpture by Roberto López and the painting by Virginia Rivas.

Juan Carlos Batista

Psicopaisaje II, 2015

Impresión digital en papel de algodón

60 x 77cm

PichiAvo

Bristol Poseidon, 2019

Mixed media on canvas

120 x 160cm

As the curator explains, the programme activates "research on the market and fairs as institutions that legitimise professional careers in the art world, but also on fashions, trends and mainstreams, focusing on those resilient artists who choose to travel along paths far removed from them". A space for the most risky and latest artistic proposals.

Another of the great novelties of this edition is the specific programme dedicated to video art and action art. Together with the video art platform PROYECTOR and with the curatorship of Mario Gutiérrez Cru, at the beginning of each day of the fair the public will be able to enjoy the best selection of video art pieces from the most outstanding international festivals around the world to continue with a direct immersion in art through the presentations and meetings with an artist every afternoon at 5pm. Abelardo Gil-Fournier, Fernando Baena, Mario Santamaría and Maia Navas will be the protagonists of this space.

And the best is always at the end, offering the audience a unique and unforgettable experience: attending live audiovisual performances by internationally renowned artists. Iván Puñal, Eunice Artur with Bruno Gonçalves, Arturo Moya with Ruth Abellán and Olga Diego will look for an intimate and personal connection with the audience at 8pm inside the Crystal Gallery of the Palacio de Cibeles.

In addition, visitors to Art Madrid'20 will be able to see the work of artists Juan Díaz-Faes and Buba Viedma at the stand set up by Yorokobu, which will bring a wide historical selection of the magazine's covers on the occasion of its 10th anniversary.

They will also be able to take a break and enjoy a cocktail thanks to Royal Bliss and its wide range of mixers where there will also be live actions with the participation of five artists who will perform their own version of the painting "The Red Dog" by Gauguin.

And in such a special celebration, the collaboration of Liquitex could not be missed, which will award a prize in materials valued at 1,500 euros to one of the participating artists of Art Madrid who uses acrylic painting as the main medium in their creations. The winner will be decided between the organisation of Liquitex and Art Madrid and on Sunday 1st March there will be a ceremony at the fair to award the prize.

Ultimately, Art Madrid'20 is celebrating its fifteenth year of existence with its most dynamic and moving edition. This is an excellent opportunity to get into the current creation scene, with a wide and varied proposal that highlights its permanent commitment to young creators and the most current forms of creation.

The painting of Daniel Bum (Villena, Alicante, 1994) takes shape as a space for subjective elaboration, where the figure emerges not so much as a representational motif but as a vital necessity. The repetition of this frontal, silent character responds to an intimate process: painting becomes a strategy for navigating difficult emotional experiences—an insistent gesture that accompanies and alleviates feelings of loneliness. In this sense, the figure acts as a mediator between the artist and a complex emotional state, linking the practice of painting to a reconnection with childhood and to a vulnerable dimension of the self.

The strong autobiographical dimension of his work coexists with a formal distance that is not the result of conscious planning, but rather functions as a protective mechanism. Visual restraint, an apparent compositional coolness, and an economy of means do not neutralize emotion; instead, they contain it, avoiding the direct exposure of the traumatic. In this way, the tension between affect and restraint becomes a structural feature of his artistic language. Likewise, the naïve and the disturbing coexist in his painting as inseparable poles, reflecting a subjectivity permeated by mystery and unconscious processes. Many images emerge without a clearly defined prior meaning and only reveal themselves over time, when temporal distance allows for the recognition of the emotional states from which they arose.

The Long Night. Oil, acrylic, and charcoal on canvas. 160 × 200 cm. 2024.

The human figure appears frequently in your work: frontal, silent, suspended. What interests you about this presence that seems both affirmative and absent?

I wouldn’t say that anything in particular interests me. I began painting this figure because there were emotions I couldn’t understand and a feeling that was very difficult for me to process. This character emerged during a very complicated moment in my life, and the act of making it—and remaking it, repeating it again and again—meant that, during the process, I didn’t feel quite so alone. At the same time, it kept me fresh and connected me to an inner child who was broken at that moment, helping me get through the experience in a slightly less bitter way.

Santito. Acrylic and oil on canvas. 81 × 65 cm. 2025.

There is a strong affective dimension in your work, but also a calculated distance, a kind of formal coldness. What role does this tension between emotion and restraint play?

I couldn’t say exactly what role that tension plays. My painting is rooted in the autobiographical, in memory, and in situations I have lived through that were quite traumatic for me. Perhaps, as a protective mechanism—to prevent direct access to that vulnerability, or to keep it from becoming harmful—that distance appears unconsciously. It is not something planned or controlled; it simply emerges and remains there.

Night Painter. Acrylic on canvas. 35 × 27 cm. 2025.

Your visual language oscillates between the naïve and the unsettling, the familiar and the strange. How do these tensions coexist for you, and what function do they serve in your visual exploration?

I think it reflects who I am. One could not exist without the other. The naïve could not exist without the unsettling; for me, they necessarily go hand in hand. I am deeply drawn to mystery and to the act of painting things that even I do not fully understand. Many of the expressions or portraits I create emerge from the unconscious; they are not planned. It is only afterwards that I begin to understand them—and almost never immediately. A considerable amount of time always passes before I can recognize how I was feeling at the moment I made them.

Qi. Acrylic on canvas. 81 × 65 cm. 2025.

The formal simplicity of your images does not seem to be a matter of economy, but of concentration. What kind of aesthetic truth do you believe painting can reach when it strips itself of everything superfluous?

I couldn’t say what aesthetic truth lies behind that simplicity. What I do know is that it is something I need in order to feel calm. I feel overwhelmed when there are too many elements in a painting, and I have always been drawn to the minimal—to moments when there is little, when there is almost nothing. I believe that this stripping away allows me to approach painting from a different state: more focused, more silent. I can’t fully explain it, but it is there that I feel able to work with greater clarity.

Crucifixion. Acrylic on canvas. 41 × 33 cm. 2025.

To what extent do you plan your work, and how much space do you leave for the unexpected—or even for mistakes?

I usually feel more comfortable leaving space for the unexpected. I am interested in uncertainty; having everything under control strikes me as rather boring. I have tried it on some occasions, especially when I set out to work on a highly planned series, with fixed sketches that I then wanted to translate into painting, but it was not something I identified with. I felt that a fundamental part of the process disappeared: play—that space in which painting can surprise even myself. For that reason, I do not tend to plan too much, and when I do, it is in a very simple way: a few lines, a plane of color. I prefer everything to happen within the painting itself.