JUAN CRUZ ANDRADA AND HIS PERSPECTIVE FOR UNDERSTANDING THE VALUE OF ART DURING MIAMI ART WEEK

By Violeta Lozada

Art Week opens its doors next week and Miami begins to beat differently. There’s a pulse you can feel while walking through the fairs—a mix of curiosity, intuition, and discovery.

JUAN CRUZ ANDRADA AND HIS PERSPECTIVE FOR UNDERSTANDING THE VALUE OF ART DURING MIAMI ART WEEK

Pinta Art Fair becomes a beacon for Latin American art, and the perspective of Juan Cruz Andrada—historian, researcher, and deep connoisseur of the art market—helps decode what unfolds behind each work, each choice, and each purchase.

 

Andrada starts from a simple yet powerful idea: the price of an artwork is not just a loose figure, but a language. It’s a language that communicates hierarchies, promises, history, and projection. Examples like the Robert Scull auction show how the market redefines, again and again, the meaning of contemporary art.

Although he rejects the idea of putting “Latin American” into a box, he does recognize something special among collectors in the region: an emotional connection with artists from their own countries. That bond, almost visceral, can be felt in the halls of Pinta, where works coexist and engage with identities, territories, and memories traveling from different corners of Latin America.

 

Andrada insists that art shouldn’t intimidate. There are many entry points, many circuits, many ways to approach it. Pinta echoes that idea: it’s a fair that invites viewers to look without fear, to ask questions, to allow themselves to be guided. Because, as Andrada notes, seeking advice in the art world is as natural as doing so in any other complex market.

Regarding trends, he highlights a strong return to painting. A painting that comes back loaded with contemporary questions: post-human landscapes, figures shaped by social tensions, abstractions that seek new ways of speaking. At the same time, there’s a growing presence of artisanal techniques—such as ceramics—that reclaim the handmade in a world saturated by the digital.

 

For Andrada, collecting means taking a leap. Daring yourself. “If you collect from passion, there is no mistake,” he says. Fairs provide that space where intuition meets history, and where a work can become not just an acquisition, but a starting point for looking at the world with new eyes.

 

*Cover image: courtesy of Juan Cruz Andrada.

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