ART MADRID'25: TWENTIETH BIRTHDAY

The rain did not prevent the twentieth anniversary of Art Madrid from being celebrated in style at the Galería de Cristal of the Palacio de Cibeles. From the 5th to the 9th of March, the headquarters of the fair opened its doors to artists, galleries, collectors, art lovers and professionals of the sector to welcome us in an edition marked by a greater presence of women artists, more than 50% of debut artists, the presence of 34 galleries and around 1100 works produced between 2022 and 2025.

Art Madrid'25. Photo by Lucas Amillano.

Art Madrid'25 opened its doors with a gallery program that included 34 exhibitors, 22 national, 12 international and 7 for the first time at the fair. More than 200 artists exhibited their most recent works, representing the latest artistic trends on the national and international scene. Painting with a relevant presence in all its forms of expression and representation; sculpture, photography, drawing, video and installation.

During these five days, Art Madrid'25 welcomed around 20,000 visitors, including collectors, professionals, the general public and new buyers.

Art Madrid'25. Photo by Lucas Amillano.

The celebration of this edition was accompanied by a parallel program focusing on the conceptual axis: Territorio Ciudad. In the run-up to the fair, from 28 February to 2 March, the following projects took place in the city of Madrid: Arquitecturas Imaginadas, Dialoga Ciudad and the second edition of La Quedada: Arquitecturas Imaginadas, Dialoga Ciudad and the second edition of La Quedada, a tour of studios and spaces for artistic creation. Arquitecturas Imaginadas transformed the metro into an ephemeral art gallery; Dialoga Ciudad filled the streets with poetry, establishing a direct dialogue with passers-by; while La Quedada opened the doors of artists' studios, allowing visitors to get a closer look at their creative processes. The week of the fair was also preceded by the Interview programme: Conversations with Marisol Salanova.

Art Madrid'25. Photo by Lucas Amillano.

After the opening of the fair, the programme continued with innovative proposals such as Open Booth, a space created in collaboration with the University of Nebrija and Liquitex, which invited students from the university's Fine Arts department to present their work in a professional context. Similarly, the Raíces Afuera** cycle explored concepts of identity and belonging through performances that proposed different points of view and an extended reflection on rootedness and mobility in contemporary society.

Art in motion also played a prominent role in this edition, thanks to Cartografías de la Percepción, a video art programme curated by PROYECTOR that analysed the relationship between inhabitants and their urban environment through immersive audiovisual works. There was also 20 Grados**, developed at Espacio Tectónica, where ten artists used augmented reality, sound and performance to explore the interaction between architecture and its inhabitants.

Art Madrid'25. Photo by Lucas Amillano.

One of the most innovative proposals in the edition was Ciudad Sutil by Susi Vetter, which transformed Montalbán Street into an interactive digital installation. This initiative transformed the public space and raised new questions about the relationship between people and their environment, inviting viewers to reflect on their impact on the urban landscape.

Around 30 artists were invited to participate in the parallel program of Art Madrid'25. An initiative that the fair's organisers intend to continue in future editions, with the aim of incorporating into the event other ways of supporting creation and encouraging dialogue between artists, the public and professionals in the sector, thus enriching the cultural experience of the fair.

Art Madrid'25. Photo by Lucas Amillano.

PATRONAGE, PRIZES AND RESIDENCIES: PROMOTING CONTEMPORARY CREATION

One of the fundamental pillars of Art Madrid is its commitment to promoting art and supporting creators. Through its Patronage Program, the fair has consolidated its role as a platform for the promotion of emerging talent and the consolidation of artists in the market.

The Acquisition Award has enabled selected works to enter important private collections. This year, the Studiolo Collection, E2IN2 Collection and Devesa Law have chosen the works of Armando de la Garza (Acquisition Award. Studiolo Collection), represented by DDR Art Gallery; Fernando Suárez Reguera (Acquisition Award. E2IN2 Collection), represented by the Luisa Pita Gallery, and Moisés Yagües (Acquisition Award. Devesa Law), represented by the Aurora Vigil-Escalera Gallery; an initiative that ensures the dissemination and preservation of the works of the winning artists within the national collecting circuit.

Art Madrid'25. Photo by Lucas Amillano.

For its part, the Emerging Artist Award, granted by One Shot Hotels as part of the One Shot Collectors program, has recognised the talent of Ana Cardoso, represented by Galería São Mamede. This recognition provides an important economic boost for the consolidation of artists in the development phase.

Finally, the Residency Award, organised in collaboration with DOM Art Residence and ExtrArtis, has been awarded to Luis Olaso, represented by Kur Art Gallery. Thanks to this award, the artist will enjoy an artistic residency in Sorrento, Italy, in August 2025, a unique opportunity for experimentation, cultural exchange and expansion of his artistic practice.

Art Madrid'25. Photo by Lucas Amillano.

COLLECTING: THE ART OF ACQUIRING WITH CRITERIA

With the One Shot Collectors Program, sponsored by One Shot Hotels, the fair sought to promote the acquisition of works of art through a space for specialised advice. Under the guidance of expert Ana Suárez Gisbert, participants received guidance on how to start buying art or expand their collections with knowledge and criteria. This programme has made a significant contribution to strengthening the contemporary art market and strengthening the link between artists and collectors.

Art Madrid'25. Photo by Lucas Amillano.

The twentieth edition of Art Madrid leaves behind sales figures that exceed those of the 2024 edition, with a total of 675 works acquired. Of these, 39 were acquired through the Art Madrid'25 Collecting Programme, led by art advisor Ana Suárez Gisbert. Ten per cent of the works exceeded the price of 20,000 euros; 15 per cent were pieces between 10,000 and 20,000 euros; 30 per cent were between 3,000 and 10,000 euros; and 45 per cent were works acquired for less than 3,000 euros. This confirms Art Madrid's role as a key event for those wishing to enter the world of collecting. In this latest edition, the fair has seen a greater influx of international visitors, as well as visitors from different regions of Spain, which confirms the growing interest of foreign collectors in adding works by Spanish artists to their collections. Once again, the galleries participating in Art Madrid have noticed an increase in the number of visitors and the interest shown by buyers, both experienced collectors and new enthusiasts who want to start collecting art.

Art Madrid'25. Photo by Lucas Amillano.

AN EVENT MADE POSSIBLE BY ITS NETWORK OF PARTNERS

The success of Art Madrid'25 was made possible thanks to the support of its official sponsors: Liquitex, Lexus, One Shot Hotels, Safe Creative, Universidad Nebrija and Cervezas Alhambra. Their support has been fundamental in the celebration of Art Madrid's twenty years of contemporary art.

In addition, the fair has enjoyed the collaboration of cultural platforms and institutions such as **PROJECTOR, CRU Cultural Platform, Contemporary Art Collectors Association 9915, Colección Studiolo, E2IN2, DOM Art Residence, Devesa, Enviarte, Vanille Bakery Lab & Café and Pago de Cirsus.

It has also received the support of public institutions such as the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, the Madrid City Council, the Ministry of Culture and Sports, and the Madrid Community, strengthening its presence in the cultural scene.

In the field of dissemination, the media partners are: PAC, Gráffica, Cultura Inquieta, ArtPrice, Arte al Límite, Arte por Excelencias, VEIN, Art Facts and Bonart Cultural have contributed to the global project of the event.

Art Madrid'25. Photo by Lucas Amillano,

ART MADRID: A FUTURE FULL OF POSSIBILITIES

After two decades of development, Art Madrid reaffirms itself as a dynamic, accessible and constantly evolving event. With more than 100,000 visitors in the last five editions, the fair has established itself as an essential reference in the national and international art scene.

The Galería de Cristal of the Palacio de Cibeles is once again the ideal setting for this celebration of contemporary art, a meeting place for galleries, collectors and artists from all over the world. With an innovative program and an increasingly open approach, Art Madrid'25 has shown that, after twenty years, its role in the artistic ecosystem is more relevant than ever, and its future is full of possibilities and new artistic explorations.

Art Madrid'25. Photo by Lucas Amillano.

Thank you for joining us in this 20th edition of Art Madrid. Your trust and support are essential to continue promoting contemporary art and culture.

See you at Art Madrid'26!

The Parallel Program of the 21st edition of Art Madrid shapes a conceptual ecosystem where theory, artistic practice, and shared experience converge, transforming the exhibition space into a territory for critical reflection and symbolic production. This initiative establishes the fair as an ephemeral organism capable of hosting multiple layers of meaning, where every architectural element, every artwork, and every movement of the public takes part in the collective construction of sense.

The theoretical foundation of this edition rests on two complementary conceptual pillars: the attention to the infra-ordinary proposed by Georges Perec in Species of Spaces and Édouard Glissant’s Poetics of Relation . On the one hand, the reflection follows Perec’s invitation to pause and focus on what usually goes unnoticed: the everyday details that shape the deep texture of our experience. Applied to the context of an art fair, this fragmented gaze reveals every wall, corridor, and booth as a micro-space of meaning, a narrative unit within a constantly evolving choral story. The fair thus emerges as a temporary archive that only reaches its full potential through the interaction of those who inhabit it, transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary through the very act of attention.

Francisco Pereira Coutinho. Prism. 2024. Photograph. Galeria Sâo Mamede.

Glissant, for his part, contributes an ethics of diversity and interdependence that is especially relevant in the contemporary context. His Poetics of Relation proposes that each element maintains its irreducible singularity without demanding complete understanding or reduction to known categories, while at the same time being transformed through its relations with others. This relational conception underpins the curatorial structure of the program, fostering encounters, frictions, and dialogues that expand our understanding of contemporary art as a shared, non-linear experience. The fair ceases to be a homogeneous whole and becomes instead a space of coexistence, where the opacity of the other is respected and valued as a condition for the possibility of genuine encounter.

The articulating concept of “imaginary distances” synthesizes both theoretical frameworks, referring not only to physical distance but also to intervals of attention, subjective paths, and affective micro-cartographies that visitors trace as they move through the space. These invisible distances, absent from architectural plans, form an emotional and sensory cartography that the fair constantly records and reconfigures. Each visitor generates their own map, their own narrative, their particular way of temporarily inhabiting this species of space.

From this perspective, the fair is understood as a surface of multiple inscriptions, where each edition leaves traces, erasures, and new marks. Every fragment, every gesture, every passage creates a layer of memory that turns experience into an act of relation and knowledge. To inhabit the fair, then, is to learn to look at what seems evident, to recognize in the minimal the possibility of the extraordinary, and to accept that every cultural experience is simultaneously archive and relation. The viewer thus adopts an active stance, transforming contemplation into an act of questioning and cohabitation, where artwork and public coexist within the same poetics of attention.

The Art Madrid’26 Parallel Program unfolds through a series of initiatives that will take place both prior to the fair and during the event itself, from March 4 to 8 at its venue in the Galería de Cristal of the Palacio de Cibeles:

Yoon Weedong. The Sacred 62. Acrylic on canvas. 2025. Banditrazos Gallery.

The curated interview program returns for its fifth consecutive edition, reaffirming itself as one of the defining features of Art Madrid’s Parallel Program. This year, independent curator and art critic Adonay Bermúdez (Lanzarote, Spain, 1985) takes on the direction of the program, bringing his extensive international experience and his sensitivity toward contemporary artistic practices from Ibero-America.

Conversations with Adonay Bermúdez opens a space to delve deeper into the experiences and creative processes of the artists, highlighting the diversity of perspectives that shape the contemporary landscape. Through dialogue, the motivations, concerns, and dynamics that inform each creator’s work are explored, emphasizing the importance of meeting points such as galleries and art fairs in the dissemination and understanding of current art. This initiative reinforces Art Madrid’s commitment to contemporary creation, offering the public a direct and human way to engage with some of the voices that shape the exhibition proposal of this edition.

The participating artists represent a wide spectrum of practices, languages, and sensibilities within contemporary art. They include: Carmen Baena, represented by Galería BAT alberto cornejo; Sergio Rocafort, represented by Shiras Galería; Chamo San, represented by Inéditad Gallery; Cedric Le Corf, represented by Loo & Lou Gallery; Daniel Bum, represented by CLC ARTE; Iyán Castaño, represented by Galería Arancha Osoro; Julian Manzelli (Chu), represented by g•gallery; and the duo DIMASLA (Diana + Álvaro), represented by Galería La Mercería. Each proposal offers a singular perspective on materials, formats, and concepts, creating a polyphony of voices that enriches the audience’s experience and invites them to explore new ways of approaching the creative universes of those who shape the fair.

Alex Voinea. AVP 1377, Acrylic on paper. 2025. Galería Rodrigo Juarranz.

Open Booth: A space for emerging creation

The third edition of the Open Booth reaffirms Art Madrid’s commitment to emerging creation, allocating a physical space of twenty-two square meters to be intervened by an artist at the beginning of their professional career. On this occasion, the invited artist is Daniel Barrio (Cienfuegos, Cuba, 1988), who will develop a site-specific project titled “Despiece”.

The Open Booth project functions as a platform for visibility and experimentation, allowing emerging artists to engage on equal terms with participating galleries. This space is conceived as an exhibition platform where ideas can materialize without the usual market constraints, encouraging risk-taking proposals and works-in-progress. In this way, the initiative exemplifies Art Madrid’s commitment to supporting new voices, recognizing that the contemporary art ecosystem requires transitional spaces where artists can professionalize and gain visibility among collectors, institutions, and other agents in the field. The Open Booth thus fits within the relational logic that underpins the entire fair program, understood as a territory of possible encounters where the emerging and the established coexist and mutually enrich one another.

Daniel Barrio’s proposal is a site-specific project that puts history, urban memory, and the materiality of space into tension. The work unfolds as a reconstructed archive, where each element—from the iconic Belvedere torso to the wax table and pigmented canvases—articulates a dialogue between the classical and the contemporary, the sacred and the everyday. In this work, the artist explores the fragility of materials, the viewer’s perception, and the sensory experience: through handmade pigments, mortar, lime, and wax—elements that activate the viewer’s corporeality, placing them in a state of vulnerability and heightened attention. The canvases, intervened upon printed supports featuring fragments of the city, function as a poetic record of culture and consumption transformed into ruin, evoking a space that is simultaneously interior and exterior.

Marcos Juncal. After Party II. 2025. Instalation. Galería La Mercería.

Nebrija Space: NotanIA SipedagogIE

Universidad Nebrija and Art Madrid join forces for the second time to present a curatorial project resulting from the work of students in the Fine Arts degree program. Nebrija Space has been conceived to support visual artists in training during their first incursion into Madrid’s contemporary art circuit. Sponsored by Liquitex, a global reference brand in professional acrylics, this initiative represents a unique opportunity for emerging artists to integrate into and actively participate in an event of national and international relevance.

The curatorial proposal is articulated under the title "NotanIA SipedagogIE", a neologism that condenses a critical reflection on the relationship between art pedagogy, the market, and technology. In contrast to the algorithmic logic of Artificial Intelligence, this project proposes the notion of Aesthetic Intelligence: a form of knowledge that integrates the sensory, the affective, the intuitive, and the cultural. It thus advances a critical and empathetic pedagogy that opposes the automation of creative thinking and promotes a situated yet nomadic aesthetic experience.

The methodology is based on the poetic appropriation of verses as a starting point for the creation of untitled works, accompanied by a mood board that documents the sensitive process. The booth is conceived as a choral and transitory work, inspired by Madrid’s SER zones, where art becomes a space of symbolic transit, resistance, and reflection on being, desire, the presence of the other, and the temporary occupation of artistic space. This proposal directly connects with the fair’s theoretical foundations, understanding the exhibition space as a site of constant negotiation between the individual and the collective.

Fabian Treiber. Strayed.Acrylic, ink, oil pastel, pastel, and paper on canvas. 2025. KANT Gallery.

The Performance Cycle presents its fourth edition under the title "Open Infinite: What the Body Remembers", an initiative aimed at strengthening the presence of women artists within the Parallel Program. This open call is directed at creators whose performative work explores the tensions between body, memory, space, and time, transforming the fair into a welcoming space for ephemeral, fragmentary, and relational experiences that expand the viewer’s perceptual and symbolic boundaries.

The project is grounded in Erving Goffman’s theory of everyday life as a stage of modulated performances, proposing that the artists’ bodies function as performative “fronts” that shape the framework of interpretation for the public. The performances dramatize the everyday, exposing tensions between the visible and the hidden, the idealized and the effort required, while articulating strategies of presence that reveal or conceal power, vulnerability, and intimacy.

Building on these notions, the cycle broadens its scope toward posthuman, decolonial, queer, ritual, and ecological perspectives, conceiving performance as an act capable of making visible the invisible connections and tensions that traverse bodies, objects, and contexts. The invited artists are Jimena Tercero (Madrid, 1998), Amanda Gatti (Porto Alegre, Brazil, 1996), La Burra Negra Collective (made up of: Sara Gema, Sasha Falcke, Ascen Soto, Gaby Feldman, Regina Carolina, and Sofía Barco), and Rocío Valdivieso (Tucumán, Argentina, 1994)., whose proposals will transform the fair into a space of welcome for ephemeral and relational experiences that expand the viewer’s perceptual and symbolic limits.

"Open Infinite…" frames the body as a site of constant negotiation between the individual and the collective, where ephemerality acquires symbolic density and the fragility of identity and the power of encounter with others are simultaneously manifested. The series proposes an inquiry into the connections between body, memory, space, and time, understanding performance as a practice that activates critical and sensitive readings of the symbolic layers that constitute us. In this sense, the body is revealed as a living archive, a territory where the marks of personal and collective history are inscribed, and where belongings and resistances are negotiated.

Eli Craven. Soap Opera 1. 2023.Inkjet print and hand-painted frame. KANT Gallery.

Lecturas: Curated Walkthroughs

The project Lecturas: Curated Walkthroughs is a cultural mediation activity designed to bring visiting audiences closer to the works exhibited in the General Galleries Program. Art historians and cultural communicators Marisol Salanova and Zuriñe Lafón invite us to discover new perspectives on contemporary art through itineraries designed to guide us through the exhibition proposals of the edition.

These thematic walkthroughsfunction as opening devices, as tools that facilitate understanding without imposing closed readings. The curators will trace four itineraries that reveal unexpected dialogues between works from different galleries, offering interpretive keys that enrich the gaze without exhausting it.

This initiative is part of the conception of the fair as a space for collective learning, fostering access to contemporary art and creating the conditions for a broad and diverse audience to fully enjoy the experience. At the same time, the walkthroughs materialize the “imaginary distances” that conceptually articulate the edition, demonstrating that each curatorial discourse constructs a particular narrative, a specific way of inhabiting the exhibition space.

Dave Cooper. Arriving at Frederic's. Oil on canvas. 2024. Est_ArtSpace.

La Quedada. Studio visit to Daniel Barrio. Guest artist at the Art Madrid’26 Open Booth

As a prelude to the fair days, Art Madrid’26 organizes several activities designed to bring the public closer to the creative process and to the participating artists. One of these is a studio visit to Daniel Barrio, invited artist for the Open Booth project. This activity will offer first-hand insight into the context, methodology, and research behind his work, providing an intimate and direct experience that enriches the relationship between the public and contemporary creation. Attendees will have the opportunity to enjoy this visit as a preview, prior to the artist’s participation in the fair.

“Despiece” is Daniel Barrio’s proposal for the Open Booth at Art Madrid’26. The work functions as a reconstructed archive, where each element—from the iconic Belvedere Torso to the wax table and pigmented canvases—articulates a dialogue between tradition and contemporaneity, history and the present.

Daniel Barrio (Cienfuegos, Cuba, 1988) has lived and worked in Madrid since 2014. Trained in painting at the Academy of Visual Arts in Cienfuegos and in Art Direction at the Madrid School of Cinematography, he develops a practice in which image and space are conceived as constructs of meaning. His work employs proprietary techniques reminiscent of fresco, using handmade pigments and supports, linking each piece to the time and environment in which it is created. He explores urban memory, migration, and the construction of identity through what has been abandoned, re-signifying press and media images as a way of resisting commodification and contemporary surveillance. His practice is a slow, reflective gesture—an act of preservation and dialogue with the ephemeral and the intimate.

Jordi Larroch. Pide un deseo. 2025. Photograph. CLC ARTE.

The Parallel Program of Art Madrid’26 is an extensive initiative within a fair model that understands contemporary art as a shared experience where multiple agents, perspectives, and temporalities converge. From curated interviews to the performance series, from the Open Booth to the Nebrija Space, each initiative contributes to creating an experience in which the audience becomes an active participant in a temporary community. The fair thus reveals itself as a living organism, another kind of space in constant reconfiguration.

Art Madrid, aware of its cultural responsibility beyond its commercial dimension, seeks to generate spaces for reflection, learning, and encounter without renouncing the art market. The challenge lies in maintaining a delicate balance between the ephemeral nature of the fair and the density of the aesthetic experience, consolidating a context in which art is perceived as an object of appreciation, debate, and knowledge.