Hall 5 at the IFEMA Madrid fairgrounds will host the season’s most important gathering for Spain’s art market: the 32nd Estampa fair, a touchstone for galleries and collectors nationwide. The event runs from October 17 through 20 and is expected to bring together nearly 100 contemporary art galleries and around a thousand artists from Spain and abroad. The fair serves as a barometer of current tastes, a meeting point for curators, buyers, and critics, and a stage for new directions in painting, drawing, photography, and mixed media.
The lineup features the leading Spanish galleries, plus about twenty new locally produced projects this year, and new collectors. With these additions, the organizers respond to the market’s evolution and align with the latest aesthetics and contemporary creators, helping to keep Spain’s already established collecting culture vibrant, active, and increasingly international.
Among the confirmed exhibitors are major names such as Helga de Alvear in Madrid, Albarrán Bourdais, 1MiraMadrid, Moisés Pérez de Albéniz, Cayón (Madrid/Menorca/Manila), Max Estrella, Fernando Pradilla, Mayoral (Barcelona), Leyendecker (Tenerife), Álvaro Alcázar (Madrid), ArtNueve (Murcia), Rafael Pérez Hernando (Madrid), Formato Cómodo (Madrid), Fernández-Braso (Madrid), T20 (Murcia), Siboney (Santander), PalmaDotze (Barcelona), Juan Silió (Madrid/Santander) or Isabel Hurley (Málaga). They are joined by newer spaces such as Yusto/Giner (Madrid/Marbella), VETA (Madrid), WeCollect (Madrid), Berlín Galería (Sevilla), Arniches 26 (Madrid), Enhorabuena Espacio (Madrid), Artizar (Tenerife), Lariot Collective (London), Untitled Art Contemporani (Andorra), Victor Lope (Barcelona), Gärna (Madrid) or 3 Punts (Barcelona). Finally, project spaces like Ponce + Robles (Madrid), Rocío Santa Cruz (Barcelona), F2 Galería (Madrid), The Ryder Projects (Madrid) and Twin Gallery (Madrid) will offer fresh ways of viewing painting.
America in the Spotlight
The 2024 Estampa edition offers an engaging program of activities highlighted by the conference series titled America ida y vuelta, featuring authors and thinkers such as Sergio Ramírez, Cervantes Prize recipient in 2017, and influential figures like Pilar Reyes, editorial director at Penguin Random House. The experience is enriched by the exhibition Crossing Perspectives, with works selected by Lorena Martínez de Corral, the fair’s curator alongside Alicia Ventura, drawn from Latin American citizen collections resident in Spain, including Otazu, Brillembourg, 360 Degrees, Collegium, Ana Helena and Eduardo Pires, and Franz Ruz.
Also essential will be the enriching talk focused on reviving the feminine thread of postwar surrealism, led by the artist Teresa Gancedo and Imma Prieto, director of the Fundació Antoni Tàpies, as part of the Foros at Colecciona; as well as the presentation of the Emilio Bordoli book by the collector himself together with Eva Ruiz, head of the international collectors program at Estampa. As in past editions, several awards will be granted, including the Madrid Community Collection/Estampa Prize, the Studiolo Collection Prize, the Navacerrada Collection Prize, the Campocerrado Foundation Prize and Residency, the Kells Collection Prize, the Aldebarán Collection Prize, the Abadía Retuerta Collection Prize, The Staircase Prize, the Palibex Collection Prize from collector Jaime Colsa, the Alhambra Prize, and the Best ESTAMPA Stand 2024 Prize.
Alberto García-Alix, Guest Artist
Estampa 2024 places a special emphasis on photography, with renowned galleries such as Blanca Berlín (Madrid), Valid Foto (Barcelona), and Spazio Nuovo (Rome) showing work, and with Alberto García-Alix named as guest artist. He is widely regarded as one of the finest portraitists on the Spanish and international art scene. His stark, elegant imagery builds a career around lived experience, with photographs that defined the Madrid Movida of the 1980s. Fueled by a mix of excess and fear, his works traverse a time, a story, and a life that is none other than his own. The artist will unveil a series created especially for Estampa and, on Sunday 20 October at 12:00, will give the conference titled Absence as Stimulus at the Museo Lázaro Galdiano in Madrid.
More information: Estampa on the IFEMA website. Source: Estampa, IFEMA.