MADRID: PATRICIA PHELPS DE CISNEROS DONATED 45 ARTWORKS TO THE REINA SOFÍA MUSEUM
Since 2012 the Reina Sofía Museum (Madrid, Spain) has significantly increased its collection of modern and contemporary Latin American art. This time, it was the renowned Venezuelan collector Patricia Phelps de Cisneros who has donated 45 works by 33 Latin American artists to the museum's collection. It should be noted that she had already donated 39 artworks to Spanish museum a few months ago.
The works that are now part of the Reina Sofía Museum collection were selected, as explained by Phelps de Cisneros, through a dialogue with curators and directors of the Spanish institution. The main objective of the dialogue was to donate works that enhance and complement the current Latin American collection of the museum. From this perspective, the donated works - books, sculptures, paintings, installations, etc. - belong, mainly, to Brazilian and Venezuelan artists from the second period of the 20th century to the present.
The artists names that constitute the group of donated artworks are: Jaime Castro Oróztegui, Marcos Coelho Benjamin, Sigfredo Chacón, Paulo Climachauska, Eduardo Costa, José Damasceno, José Dávila, Danilo Dueñas, Iran do Espírito Santo, José Gabriel Fernández, Magdalena Fernández, Teresita Fernández, Héctor Fuenmayor, Rubens Gerchman, Fernanda Gomes, Alí González, Ester Grinspum, Arturo Herrera, Oscar Machado, Fabian Marcaccio, Roberto Obregón, Rosana Palayzan, Paulo Pasta, Nuno Ramos, Rosângela Rennó, Miguel Ángel Ríos, Mauricio Ruiz , Valeska Soares, Edgard de Souza Javier Téllez, Marcia Thompson, Angelo Venosa and Augusto Villalba.
Despite the political situation in Venezuela, Cisneros Foundation - created in 1970 by Patricia and Gustavo A. Cisneros and directed by Adriana Cisneros- remains with its headquarters in Caracas. The Cisneros marriage commitment to Latin and Ibero-American art has no borders: the foundation maintains contact with artists and galleries from all over the world, including Venezuelans in Venezuela and exiles, in order to introduce them to the market and the scene of world art to those artists with significant productions that deserve recognition. Among the institutions that have received the benefit of the foundation are the MoMA of New York, the Museum University of Navarra, the Hispanic Society of America, the Museum of Art of Lima, the Tate of London, the Museum of Modern Art of Buenos Aires Aires, the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, Texas, the Denver Museum of Art, in Colorado, the Bronx Museum of Art in New York, the MACBA in Barcelona, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Amparo in Mexico and the Gallery of National Art of Venezuela and the Museum of Fine Arts of Caracas.
The recent donation to the Reina Sofia Museum at Madrid also has its personal side. Besides being Venezuelan, Patricia Phelps de Cisneros has a close link with the European country. On the one hand, she has Spanish citizenship and, on the other, since Manuel Borja-Villel created the foundation of Spanish and Ibero-American collectors for the expansion of the Latin American collection in the museum, she has established very good relations with those who work in it. With this contribution, there are already 85 pieces donated by the Cisneros Foundation to the Spanish capital museum. Far away from the economic speculation of collecting, the figure of Patricia Phelps de Cisneros is an example for patronage, education and research within the field of arts in the 21st century.
