Fundación ARCO awards the 22nd edition of the "A" Awards for Collecting

Fundación ARCO, promoted by IFEMA, has awarded the "A" Awards for Collecting. In this twenty-second edition, six awards that acknowledge the artistic value of collectors and institutions' collections were given, as well as in recognition of their work in supporting the dissemination of contemporary art.

After the meeting of the Board of Trustees and the Advisory Board of Fundación ARCO, the work of six important collections has been acknowledged: for the quality of the works and the exhibitions held in Madrid and Paris, the Alicia Koplowitz - Omega Capital collection; the inauguration of the Bombas Gens space in Valencia has been the reason to reward the Per Amor a l'Artcollection; from Portugal, the work of Armando Martins and his family has been acknowledged, every May they show their work at the Correio Mor Palace; Ella Fontanals Cisneros Collection for the visibility that its collection and the CIFO Foundation have given to Latin American artists. And also, the Collection of Latin American Art, The Museum of Fine Arts Houston, was awarded for its twentieth century Latin American collection. The Museum will soon open a new wing dedicated to the collection. In Brazil, the winner was Luis Paulo Montenegro, whose works can be seen at the Fundación Banco Santander until May 2018. All of them were selected for their work fostering the development of contemporary culture.

The award ceremony will take place at the Teatro Real on Tuesday, February 20, after which a dinner, sponsored by Grupo Canalejas, will be held in which funds will be raised for acquiring works for the collection at ARCOmadrid.

2018 Winners:

Colección Alicia Koplowitz -  Grupo Omega Capital

Alicia Koplowitz Romero de Juseu, Marquesa de Bellavista, Grand Cross of the Order of Civil Merit, Knight of the French Legion and Gold Medal of the Community of Madrid, is President of the Grupo Omega Capital, an investment company created by her in 1998.

Composed mainly of works from the 16th to the 21st centuries, the Alicia Koplowitz Collection – Grupo Omega Capital, covers an extensive period, encompassing the taste for both the old masters and the works of contemporary artists. 

In 2017, the Collection was displayed for the first time in two monographic exhibitions that took place at the Jacquemart-André Museum in Paris and at the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum.

Per Amor a L’Art Collection

In 2014, the couple formed by Susana Lloret and José Luis Soler created the Fundació Per Amor a l'Art, with the mission of raising awareness and sharing in three areas: social aid, rare diseases and art. From the outset, Susana Lloret took control and started up the renovation and transformation of the old Bombas Gens factory (Valencia) into an art centre and the headquarters of the Fundació. Pumps Gens Centre d'Art was inaugurated in July 2017 and since then it has opened this collection to the public.

Per Amor a L'Art is a collection of modern and contemporary art with a penchant for the abstract in painting, sculpture and film. Much of the collection, on which Vicente Todolí has provided advice, is composed of national and international authors who work with photography, and many of them are extensively represented. It aptly may be described as a collection of exhibitions, which currently has over 1,800 works by more than 140 authors.

Armando Martins Collection

Armando Gertrudes Martins is President and Manager of several companies and one of his most recent projects is the acquisition of Quinta do Correio-Mor, 15 minutes from the centre of Lisbon. With 140 hectares the Quinta will be used for various cultural activities, and the property will be reconditioned during 2018. 

Armando Martins began his collection during his youth by acquiring serigraphs, mainly by Portuguese artists. Today it comprises around 400 pieces, with works by Portuguese and international artists.

He intends to open a Museum of Contemporary Art in Lisbon in 2019 in an eighteenth century palace that he acquired about 12 years ago, and for which a restoration project has been approved by the City of Lisbon.

Ella Fontanals Cisneros Collection

Ella Fontanals Cisneros is a philanthropist and businesswoman with an unwavering passion and an infallible eye for contemporary art and design. She began collecting at the beginning of the 1970s, and her main interest was Latin American art. During the following years, the scope of the Collection expanded as the Collection grew and developed. What began as the acquisition of works of art for personal enjoyment has matured into an ambitious life project.

In a way, there are several collections within the Collection. There are four main areas of interest that have been systematically increasing in recent years: Latin American geometric abstraction; contemporary international and Latin American art; contemporary video; modern and contemporary photography.

The Collection is currently under the care of the Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation, a non-profit foundation that she and her family established in 2002.

Luis Paulo Montenegro Collection

Luis Paulo Montenegro is vice-resident of Kantar Ibope Media, formerly Ibope (Brazilian Institute of Public Opinion and Statistics). He started his artistic collection in 1999, initially dedicated to pieces of Brazilian art. He bought his first work at an auction: La india Caraña by Cándido Portinari. The collection is housed in his home, office and country house 

He has been commissioner of Inhotim (Minas Gerais, Brazil) since 2004, and is currently Deputy Director of Art and Cultural Programmes.

The exhibition features postwar Brazilian art and works from the 40-60s of the 20th century, with artists such as Alexander Calder, Lygia Clark, Willem de Kooning, Wifredo Lam, Hélio Oiticica, Lygia Pape, Alfredo Volpio, Andy Warhol.

Latin American Art Collection, The Museum of Fine Arts Houston 

Mari Carmen Ramírez is Wortham Commissioner for Latin American Art and Director of the International Center for the Arts of the Americas (ICAA) at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. She has published numerous works and curated a large number of exhibitions for which she has received prizes, including Inverted Utopias: Avant-Garde Art in Latin América (con Héctor Olea).

Since its inauguration in 2001, the Department of Latin American Art of the Museum of Fine Arts of Houston has acquired more than 700 works of Latin American and Latin contemporary and modern art, including the purchase in 2007 of the Adolpho Leirner Collection of Brazilian Constructivism, a transcendental collection of one hundred art works of Concretism and Neo-Concretism of the 50s and 60s.

 Also created in 2001, the International Center for the Arts of the Americas (ICAA) is the research arm of the Department of Latin American Art. The International Center’s mission is to encourage research on the varied artistic production of Latin America and Latin artists from Mexico, Central and South America, the Caribbean and the United States, as well as to educate the public and open new spaces for intercultural dialogue and exchange.