ARCOmadrid Balances Curatorial Quality With an Easygoing Spirit

March 9, 2026 / Rolling Stone British /

This European fair has long cultivated its reputation as a platform for encountering thoughtful work rather than a marketplace where well-heeled buyers chase high-priced trophies. Courtesy ARCOmadrid

At 45 years old, ARCOmadrid has been running long enough that generational shifts have taken place in both the galleries that bring work to the fair and the collectors who frequent it. Director Maribel López, who has been in the position for 15 years, should know. She herself was once a gallerist (“I was not a good gallerist—but I was a passionate gallerist!”), and the experience shaped her devotion and respect “for the gallery as an institution.” When she joined ARCOmadrid in 2011, the fair was weathering rough economic times. “It was difficult to convince galleries to come to Spain,” she told Observer. “That’s changed radically in these years.”

By 2015-16 the economy in Spain was improving and things started to shift. “As a constant, we didn’t change the tone in what is important for us. We never chased blue-chip galleries… Sometimes they want to come, sometimes they don’t. We don’t chase them because, for me, that alters the ecosystem too much. ARCO is a fair where people come to discover new artists, to find interesting pieces but not at the highest of prices.”

At its latest edition, held March 4-8 with 211 galleries from 30 countries, there was no sign of a midlife crisis. The goal, according to López, is “the sustainability of the business more than the profit” because ARCOmadrid nourishes Fundación ARCO, which promotes collecting, contemporary art research and the publication of artistic trends and techniques. Founded in 1987, the foundation’s collection includes pieces by Ryan Gander, Beatriz González, Carlos Motta, Oscar Muñoz, Adam Pendleton, Laure Prouvost and Danh Vo.

ARCOmadrid continues to function as a Latin American focal point in Europe. Participation at this year’s fair was 34 percent Spanish and 66 percent international, with more than 31 percent of the international galleries hailing from 11 Latin American countries with a marked presence from Brazil and Argentina. López noted that Madrid outside of ARCO is “very lively” not only institutionally but also because galleries from Latin America open second spaces locally and collectors from Latin America infuse the scene with fresh energy.

Madrid gallery Memoria were making their debut at the fair in this edition. “If you’re not in ARCO, you’re not doing anything,” gallery staffer Maria González declared. She and her colleague Amalia Pascua were both sporting round red stickers reading “Cultural VAT now” in Spanish to show their allegiance to the strike happening during the fair. (The Spanish government introduced the possibility for VAT reform in 2024 but didn’t carry it out. Comparatively, France, Germany and Italy have all made VAT reforms.) Pascua said it has spawned “a sense of community within the galleries; we have a common goal, we’re fighting for a common strategy.” It’s important to democratize art and “it’s awful for the artists and the galleries, so we’re protesting against that,” González added.

The stand featured a six-meter-long canvas by Spanish-born Chilean artist Roser Bru—the gallery’s highest-priced work at €45,000—brought from Chile and mounted on a wooden structure. “We based the curation around this,” Pascua noted. The work references an elegiac poem by Pablo Neruda (“Spain In Our Hearts”) and also repeatedly reused Robert Capa’s iconic image of a fallen soldier. Memoria’s project space was dedicated to Terry Holiday, a trans woman in her 70s (double the life expectancy of a trans woman in Mexico). The project space is “an homage to her life and the struggles she’s had, but it’s also an ode to the joy that she brings… she’s empowering herself and standing up to all those that can’t and couldn’t, and telling the story of her friends… because she has a voice,” Pascua noted.

Although a young space, Memoria was not part of ARCOmadrid’s new galleries section curated by Rafa Barber and Anissa Touati, which showcased galleries that have been operating for less than eight years. The section included booths from emerging spaces in Athens, Istanbul, Tbilisi, Ljubljana and Cape Town, as well as exo exo gallery from Paris, which was showing Ash Love—who has work on view at Casa de Velázquez, a French institution based in Madrid for nearly a century. “In that context, we thought it would be interesting to show his work given this residence,” noted gallerist Elisa Rigoulet. It was the first time the French gallery had participated in ARCOmadrid—though they’d shown Ash Love at Art Basel Paris in October—and it felt like a successful inclusion. “Sometimes fairs can be slow—this is very dynamic,” Rigoulet said.

One Ash Love piece—an acrylic box filled with compressed Mylar balloons and party dust, like if Arman was a raver—sold on the VIP day for €2500, as did an oil on linen painting by Yann Stéphane Bisso for €3000. Another young gallery, New York’s Gratin spearheaded by Madrid-born gallerist Andrea Torriglia, showed work by 28-year-old self-taught German artist Max Jahn, who paints self-portraits on copper in a nod to the Old Masters tradition. Gratin’s booth, with works ranging from $12,000-$22,000, sold out on the VIP day to institutions and European art collections.

Among the most seasoned fair participants was Chantal Crousel from Paris. Niklas Svennung, Crousel’s son and the gallery’s director, affirmed that his mother started coming to ARCOmadrid in 1980. The gallery participates in nine art fairs each year, and Svennung feels that “ARCO has cultivated a big generosity and seems to be a very genuine alternative to other ways to navigate the art fair agenda that we know is very intense. I think ARCO has always managed to be very ambitious, yet very human and friendly at the same time.” He positioned the fair’s philosophy as “people who are also interested in an alternative to the, let’s say, very Anglo-Saxon way of doing art business” and appreciates that “year after year, it seems… very healthy, intellectually speaking.”

The gallery mounted a group show, with Anri Sala’s work being the most accessible at €25,000 and José María Sicilia’s the most expensive at €90,000. Sicilia, with whom the gallery has worked for more than 40 years, has a show of light pieces and embellished mirrored folding screens at Madrid’s Palacio de Liria, a sprawling neoclassical private home and estate. There was also work in the booth by Wolfgang Tillmans, currently visiting professor at Beaux-arts de Paris and pieces made in 2025 by Rirkrit Tiravanija, Abraham Cruzvillegas and Gabriel Orozco.

Galería Rafael Ortiz brought silver gelatin prints by Graciela Iturbide. Courtesy the artist and gallery

Madrid- and Seville-based Galería Rafael Ortiz, which has participated in the fair since 1986, brought silver gelatin prints by Graciela Iturbide (which sold on the VIP day), bright gouaches on paper by Equipo 57, geometric and graphic acrylics on canvas by Manuel Barbadillo and mixed media sculptures in wood, metal and lead by Carmen Calvo. The works in the booth ranged from €2000-€95,000. There was also a special project dedicated to Curro González because, said gallerist Rosalía Ortiz, showing just “two [works] by one artist makes it really difficult for visitors to understand a career.” González’s paintings on canvas were dense with lines so fine they appeared to be made with pen, alongside unique polychrome ceramics and ink drawings on paper, functioning as a kind of “small exhibition.”

Nächst St. Stephan. Courtesy Nächst St. Stephan, photo by GRAYSC

Nächst St. Stephan from Vienna’s booth leaned “minimal and abstract,” noted gallerist Rosemarie Schwarzwälder, another veteran who has been participating since the 1980s and who also served on ARCOmadrid’s selection committee for seven years. She said that “this art fair is always a platform [through which] people meet each other. Either you meet artists or you meet collectors or you meet friends like this, and get to know another culture.” She was showing Katharina Grosse, with whom she has worked for more than 25 years, with a painting priced at €265,000, as well as a small textile work by Sheila Hicks for €48,000. There were also pieces by Czech-born Luisa Kasalicky—a “great talent with her very specific own language”—and Jongsuk Yoon—“a late bloomer… we met maybe when she was a little bit over 50, but she was very energetic, and she really wanted to enter in this art market.”

Ultimately, the vibe this past weekend in the IFEMA conference center was a good one. As Svennung of Chantal Crousel put it: “it’s a complicated time, but ARCO and an art fair like this is capable of providing a sense of community and of elevated thinking and exchange and tolerance that’s important to have at any price nowadays.”