Fundación ARCO holds the 23rd edition of the "A" Awards for Collecting

Cleusa Garfinkel

Cleusa Garfinkel is one of the most active and influential collectors on the Brazilian art scene. She began her collection in 1974 by acquiring paintings by Brazilian modernist artists such as Alfredo Volpi, Antonio Bandeira and Yolanda Mohalyi, as well as popular artists such as Miriam Inés. From the 80s, she became interested in contemporary art, both Brazilian and international, making it her speciality, and incorporated names like Alighiero Boeti, Ansel Kiefer, Beatriz Milhazes, Carlos Bunga, Carlos Garaicoa, Cecily Brown, Edgar de Souza, Georg Baselitz, Jaume Plensa, Miquel Barceló and Tunga into her collection.

Cleusa Garfinkel’s collection is highly committed to contemporary production, especially from Brazil, represented by names such as Beatriz Milhazes, Cildo Meireles, Edgar de Souza, Jac Leirner and Tunga, but it also has a strong presence of key names on the international scene, such as Anish Kapoor, Ansel Kiefer, Damian Hirst, Georg Baselitz, Jaume Plensa, Mona Hatoum, Olafur Eliasson and Willian Kentridge, something that is not yet very common among Brazilian private collectors. Another feature of her collection is the strong presence of women artists, such as Brazilians Adriana Varejão, Anna Maria Maiolino and lygia Clark, Cuban Zília Sanchéz, French Louise Bougeois and British Tracy Emmy.

CAAC MALI, Museo de Arte de Lima

The Contemporary Art Acquisitions Committee was created in December 2006 to support MALI in the enrichment of its permanent contemporary art collection and to contribute to making these collections a representative sample of contemporary creation in Peru and of the country’s links with the art of other Latin American countries. Following in the footsteps of Jorge Basadre Brazzini, Muriel Clemens and Alberto Rebaza Torres, Alexandra Bryce Cisneros took on the presidency of the committee in 2018.

MALI’s contemporary art collection is testimony to the museum’s commitment to the artistic creation of today. Although its beginnings converge with those of the museum itself, both have gained a new impetus in recent years. A marked shift toward the development of an art scene in full and radical transformation. It is the very dynamism of local art that leads to the creation of a specialized curatorship and this Acquisitions Committee, which is exclusively dedicated to enriching the contemporary collection.

The Meadows Foundation

The Meadows Museum is the principal US institution focused on the study and presentation of Spanish art. In 1962, Dallas businessman and philanthropist Algur H. Meadows donated his private collection of Spanish paintings and other works to the Southern Methodist University to create a museum, which was opened to the public in 1965. This marked the first step in fulfilling Meadows' vision of creating “a small Prado for Texas”. Today, The Meadows houses one of the largest and most complete collections of Spanish art outside Spain. The collection embraces the 10th to the 21st centuries and includes medieval objects, Renaissance and Baroque sculptures, paintings from the Golden Age and of modern masters, as well as an important collection of contemporary art. The artists represented in the collection include Dalí, El Greco, Fortuny, Goya, Miró, Murillo, Picasso, Ribera, Sorolla and Velázquez, among many others.

Linda Perryman Evans is the president and CEO of The Meadows Foundation, one of the largest and most influential private charitable foundations in Texas. Director and administrator of the Foundation since 1976 and president since 1998, she is the grandniece of the founders, Algur H. and Virginia Meadows.

Banco de España Collection

The Banco de España Collection is the result of an artistic heritage built up over more than two hundred years. It has its origin in works commissioned by the Banco de San Carlos, founded in 1782, to several artists of that time, including Francisco de Goya, of whom the collection preserves eight magnificent portraits. Works were added from the collections of the Banco de San Fernando and the Banco de Isabel II, which merged in 1856 to create the Banco de España. The collection has continued growing to this day, thanks to the Bank's continuous collecting and patronage efforts, gathering more than four thousand pieces including paintings, drawings, sculpture, photography, engravings and decorative arts.

The works of the 20th and 21st centuries, which make up 80% of the total, supplement the collection's historical section One of the most consistent themes in this section is that of abstract work, both informal (with works by Tapies, Saura, Millares, Guerrero or Chillida, among others) and its more geometric and analytical version (Palazuelo, Oteiza, Chillida, Asins, Ferrer and Sevilla). From the eighties and nineties come the creations of artists such as Gordillo, Miura, Campano, Quejido, Sicilia, Solano, López Cuenca or Aballí, etc., of whom the Bank holds important collections which showcase their extensive careers. The Bank's integration into the Euro system in the 21st century saw the beginning of the process of globalising the collection, with the incorporation of creators from the European (Etel Adnan, Miriam Cahn, Loboda, Höfer, Tillmans) and Ibero-American (Soto, Negret, Ramo, Macchi, Apóstol, Gusmão and Paiva, Louro, etc.) spheres who, together with other current Spanish artists (García Andújar, Ballester, Ribalta, Lucas, etc.), form a rich panorama of the most recent art.

HEF Collection, Juan Entrecanales Azcárate

The Juan Entrecanales Collection extends from the end of the 19th century to the present day and includes more than five hundred works. It begins with the works inherited from his father, José Entrecanales, which are mainly Spanish paintings from the period 1880-1920. In addition to these, he is expanding his collection with artists like Picasso, Chagall, Juan Gris, Bores, Pancho Cossío and Julio González, among others.

Juan Entrecanales' interest in and enthusiasm for contemporary art have led him to create a truly representative collection of current creation, both national and international. The collection is the reflection of this passion that he shares with his family and which makes him a regular visitor at fairs, galleries and art institutions.

His collection includes works by artists of the fifties and sixties such as Guerrero, Palazuelo, Zóbel, Millares, Saura, Canogar, Tápies and Ráfols Casamada. It continues with Gordillo, Carmen Laffón, Günther Förg, Jesús Rafael Soto, Juan Muñoz, Carlos León, Soledad Sevilla, Perejaume, Mark Francis, Juan Uslé, Juliào Sarmento, Thomas Scheibitz, Daniel Canogar, José Manuel Ballester, Miki Leal, Secundino Hernández and Santiago Giralda, to name but a few.

Kells Collection, Juan Manuel Elizalde and Choli Fuentes

The Kells collection began to take shape in 1996, when Juan Manuel Elizalde and Choli Fuentes immersed themselves in the art world. At that time, they were interested in modern artists and artworks, mainly paintings and sculptures from the second half of the twentieth century: Feito, Saura, Clavé, Sempere, Genovés or Baltasar Lobo, among others.

In 2004 they began delving into the world of contemporary art, including objects with character, and they acquired the first contemporary artwork of the collection.

Since then, the Kells Collection has been in a process of continuous growth with contributions of photography, for which they feel a special passion, as well as sculpture, video, objets d'art and installations. Conceptually, they understand collecting as an intense journey of learning and emotions. The collection, with several hundred works, currently has an eclectic character, reflecting their interests and the issues for which they feel a special affection and sensitivity. They are very open to both young artists and those in the process of assertion and development, who work with topics such as communication and language in many different fields.

The collection includes both emerging artists such as Juan López, Kepa Garraza, Guillermo Mora, Blanca Gracia, Clara Sánchez, Santi Giralda, Nacho Martín Silva, Miguel Angel Tornero, Carlos Irijalba, June Crespo, Sergio Prego or David Bestúe, who find themselves in a process of aesthetic investigation and formal development, as well as works by artists with a long career path such as Juan Uslé, Carmen Calvo, Esther Ferrer, Angela de la Cruz, Jordi Teixidor, Antonio Ballester, Bernardí Roig, Richard Mosse, Dora Longo Bahia, Gustav Kramer, Liliana Porter, Sandra Gamarra, Francois Bucher, Tony Ousler, Carlos Bunga, Carlos Garaicoa or Maria Loboda.