In its seventeen previous editions, the Art Madrid fair has been a stage where Portuguese galleries have met, turning our event into an unmissable appointment to discover and appreciate the news of an essential representation of the Portuguese visual arts production. And lay on the table the interest in these established spaces and their market internationalization inside and outside Portugal. From February 22 to 26 galleries, already familiar with the fair's context, return: Art Lounge Gallery, (Lisbon), Nuno Sacramento Arte Contemporânea, (Ílhavo), Galeria São Mamede, (Lisbon) and Trema Arte Contemporânea, (Lisbon) joins the roast. Twenty artists will land in our capital thanks to these spaces to show their most recent works. Painting, photography, sculpture and drawing prevail in this edition.

Lúcia Davis, “Rubbish”. Trema Arte Contemporáneo ©

The galleries' exhibition proposals stand out for the support and materials experimentation. From poetic-plastic rereadings of everyday objects (Trema Arte Contemporânea); the disruption of photography (Nuno Sacramento Arte Contemporânea); painting and drawing as experiential tools (São Mamede Gallery), and the interrelation between pictorial exercise and the space that contains it (Art Lounge Gallery). These brushstrokes shed light on the interest of each exponent to travel on the right foot in the paths of contemporary visual production in Portugal and its representation at the behest of the market.

Sofia Areal, “Coração e Noite” 2010. Galería São Mamede ©

Special attention deserves Trema Arte Contemporânea, which began its activity with a group of emerging Portuguese artists and nowadays is recognized in the Portuguese gallery circuit as one of the highest-level galleries. It has marked the eclecticism of the most current Portuguese art and other foreign artists with innovative projects for over twenty years. From its list, we want to highlight Carlos Barão, a spontaneous artist who focuses his research on the search for sensations that border on dreaminess within the painting. And the works of Lúcia David, who immerses herself in drawing to raise the roots of an imperfect and daring staging. Galeria São Mamede opened its doors in the sixties, and its interest has always been framed within the Portuguese modernism and contemporary movement. From its list, we highlight the participation of Sofía Areal one of the most important painters of her generation, and Nélio Saltão a self-taught artist with a meaningful career in painting and color experimentation.

João Noutel, “Future”, 2022. Art Lounge Gallery ©

While the series of portraits of Nuno Horta (Mirandela, Bragança, Portugal, 1977) repeats in ArtMadrid with Nuno Sacramento Arte Contemporânea. The great beauty is frozen in the approximations that this artist conjures up of the human figure, totally fanatical about the perfection and deification of the faces. Human physiognomy becomes an updated account of experimentation with fluorescent light and color in an intrinsic search for golden proportions. The treatment of postmodern icons in João Noutel work (Porto, Portugal, 1971) is another of the approaches that Art Lounge Gallery proposes to the painting. The artist works on an interesting pictorial proposal. He recounts the complex mechanisms of the image and its deconstruction or reconversion into an object of desire in the times that welcome us.

The Portuguese visual arts show, with these representations in our fair, the solid contemporary movement breathed into the gallery circuit to which they belong.

nuno Horta, “Dominion”, 2021. Nuno Sacramento Arte Contemporânea ©

Fight of Giants relies on figurative art and the character of the Pink Panther to reclaim the democratic genetics of Pop Art and its proximity to the audience, characteristics of an artistic movement inspired by the aesthetics of everyday life and consumer goods of the time. As a "happening" in the heart of the city of Madrid, Fight of Giants advocates for artistic creation in a context where the aesthetic experience is more exciting and better understood by all audiences.

Sixty years ago, Blake Edwards released in Technicolor one of the most unique feature films of the time, which would not only become part of American culture but also the international comedy universe: "The Pink Panther", whose original title was translated into Spanish as "La Pantera Rosa."

Jaime Sancorlo. Desert Patrol, 2023

In 1963, this comedy-thriller entered the bloodstream of the emerging Pop movement in a New York City experiencing the birth of the "Factory" and the rise of Truman Capote. Just like previous editions of this informal field called Battle of Giants (a "non-gallery," a "non-museum," something more than an exhibition, as defined by its creators Gabriel Suarez and Aleix Gordo), The Pink Panther reappears this time as a timeless character capable of questioning and reclaiming the present through its staging.

Sandra Rojo Picón. No9. Blue Pink, 2023

After obtaining the copyright for its reproduction directly from MGM, the commemoration of the character's sixtieth anniversary brings together thirty giant artists who, struggling together, will visually reflect on their socio-cultural present, their artistic and visual context, and their work, around the figure of the iconic pink character. At the same time, the proposal promotes the revision of the context of art itself, wanting to establish new places for the shared experience between the work of art and the observer, going beyond the apathy of the white cubes or those artistic spaces of restricted access belonging to the past.

Illan Argüello. Más chula que el 8, 2023

In this way and demonstrating the bitter heritage typical of British comedy or "pop art", the film was connected to the impulses of the new artistic exploration that was emerging in the streets of the Big Apple, far from the chromatic and gestural abstraction that had occupied the art scene during the previous decade, with figures such as Mark Rothko, Barnet Newman, Willem de Kooning or Jackson Pollock, and which had also moved away from the gaze of the general public. The New York cultural scene was now moving forward in the hands of the film director towards other paths closer to mass culture and its daily life through humor. In his first solo appearance in the Pink Phink chapter, the Pink Panther establishes a colorful battle against the traditional hegemony of the color blue, using all kinds of tricks and strategies to dye the world with his favorite color. In only six minutes in which we could see pictorial inheritances coming from the chromatic universe of Rothko and other abstract creators, the character is introduced in the culture of the politically incorrect.

Iker Serrano. Space Action Panther,2023

The Pink Panther represents irony, discontent or cynicism, clichés of what we know as "British sense of humor" and will always act, throughout all the short films, as a timeless critic, as an inter-generational and individual being capable of conversing with the general public, regardless of their origin, culture or age.

Mario Soria. Pink Biker,2023

Under the apparent atmosphere of humor and comedy of the new interpretations made by the thirty selected giants, there is a world of diverse readings and messages to be discovered, which will be unveiled by the other fundamental agent of any artistic process: the audience.

Fight of Giants gathers this time thirty individual visions for a collective and close reconstruction of its present, where the general public has been invited to participate with total freedom in this exciting process.

From May 25th to 28th. From 11h to 20h.

📍Hotel ONLY You Barquillo.

C/ del Barquillo, 21. Madrid.