ESTAMPA 2021: A REASON TO BELIEVE IN THE RETURN OF THE TRADE FAIRS
The twenty-eighth edition of Estampa, the contemporary art fair with a focus on the Spanish market, opens the doors of IFEMA -Spain's most important fairground- and reopens the art fair circuit since the beginning of the pandemic.
After the last celebration of ARCOmadrid, which took place in February 2020, the health crisis froze, not only in Madrid, but worldwide, the art fair circuit, a fundamental element for the development of the art market. Estampa 2021, in this sense, is a commitment and an adaptation to the new requirements demanded by the context, but above all a start-up of the cultural industry.
Under the direction of Chema de Francisco, this new edition of Estampa, which opened on Thursday 8, brings together 70 Spanish galleries to present the artwork of more than 1,000 contemporary artists to collectors and the general public. The fair has three main axes: the Genera Programme, the Colecciona Programme (fundamental for the reactivation of the market) and the participation of Victoria Civera as the fair's guest artist.
As in every edition, the galleries that constitute the General Programme are all from Spain. On this occasion, the fair includes emblematic Madrid and Barcelona galleries such as 3 Punts Galería, David Cervelló, Fernando Pradilla, Juana de Aizpur, Mayoral and Max Estrella, among others. But characterised, since its beginnings, for being a fair oriented towards new productions and emerging figures within the Spanish cultural scene, galleries and spaces with short trajectories also participate, such as Espacio Valverde (Madrid), Kernel (Cáceres) or Espacio Líquido + La Gran, and also galleries that have been working for decades to give visibility to the production of the other regions of Spain, decentralising the scene: Llamazares (Gijón), Wadström Tönnheim Gallery (Marbella), Vanguardia (Bilbao) and Antonio Puyó (Zaragoza), for example.
The General Programme also includes the curatorial project directed by art historian and cultural manager Alicia Ventura. In this section, entitled Intergenerational Dialogue, Ventura invited the galleries Alarcón Criado (Seville), Ponce + Robles (Madrid), The Ryder (Madrid), Rosa Santos (Valencia) and T20 (Murcia) to participate.
Regarding the Colecciona Programme, carried out in collaboration with the Ministry of Culture and Sport and the Banco Santander Foundation, the documentary project Coleccionar will be screeened. Focused on highlighting the figure of collecting as a fundamental element of the art industry (especially in a context such as the one we are going through), the audio-visual project revolves around six key figures in Spanish collecting: Francisco Cantos Baquedano, Candela A. Soldevilla, Luis Caballero, Rosa Clemente, Juan Manuel Sánchez García and Borja Fernández Cobaleda.
Finally, following Daniel Canogar, guest artist at Estampa 27, Victoria Civera is participating in this new edition with a large-format sculptural piece located on the fairgrounds: Aviador Sibila. Victoria Civera (Puerto de Sagunto, 1955) is a multidisciplinary artist who has worked in fields as diverse as photography, happening, pointillism and installation.
If you want to visit Estampa 2021 and you are not sure about COVID-19, here you can find the health protocol developed by IFEMA to be able to enjoy culture safely.
