ARCO Lisboa: relaxed atmosphere is a stimulus for sales
The ninth edition had a good response in terms of sales. Many international collectors attended and great support from Portuguese institutions
Key points
The contemporary art fair ARCO Lisboa (28-31) is now in its ninth edition, with 83 galleries present, from 17 different countries. And although it was born from a spin-off of the much more muscular ARCO Madrid, it has managed to integrate perfectly into the Portuguese art ecosystem, with many peculiarities that distinguish it from its mother fair. The event takes place within the 'Corderie Nazionali' once home to Portugal's thriving shipbuilding industry, a history and also a contemporary conversion very similar to the Arsenale in Venice. The majority of the galleries are Portuguese but with a good contribution also from Spain, Latin America, on the long wave of Arco Madrid and from former Portuguese colonies such as Brazil and Mozambique. Among the most internationally renowned Lusitanian galleries we find Francisco Fino, and in his stand the main protagonist is Helena Almeida, a photographer who disappeared about ten years ago but is still very much in the spotlight of museums and the market. Her meta-photography in which the subject is always herself and in which there are pictorial or three-dimensional interventions has fair quotations from 63,000 to 160,000 euros.
Many of the most recognised Portuguese artists such as Pedro Calapez, Jorge Molder are to be found in the Miguel Nabinho Gallery's stand, with a large abstract painting by Pedro Cabrita Reis selling for EUR 95,000 among all the works.
The Cristina Guerra gallery is present at the fair with a dialogue between well-known national and international artists.Juliao Sarmento, a pioneer of Portuguese art abroad and also celebrated in his homeland with a dedicated museum, the Pavilhao Juliao Sarmento, is present with two very refined drawings from 2017, among the last of his production, on sale at €14,000 each. Of an altogether different stylistic register, Erwin Wurm's sculpture 'Hey', a polished bronze wuster, greets visitors from the centre of the stand, 65,000 asking.
Consonni Radziszewsky Gallery, the brainchild of gallery owners Matteo Consonni and Dawid Radziszewsky, with offices in Milan, Warsaw and also in Lisbon, at ARCO offers a duo-show of material and minimal works by Polish Marcin Zarzeka (2.500-3,500 euros) and the multifaceted sculpture-installations of the Spanish Belén Uriel, with prices up to 12,000 euros, Uriel has also been rewarded by institutional acquisitions. Also among the most observed was the Mozambican gallery Arte D'Gema, here with a large installation by the artistAngela Ferreira, 'Klucis goes to Algeria', which speaks of propaganda and political communication and was acquired by the Lisbon museum MACAM for EUR 60,000. Also present on the stand are the works of Estevao Mucavele who discovered and cultivated his artistic vocation while working as a miner in the mines of South Africa; his paintings, in which colour is spread on a black base, have quotations between EUR 12,000 and EUR 25,000.
An attractive entry price
Stand prices at ARCO Lisbon start at EUR 2,500 for the smallest sizes, a hyper-competitive price among European fairs that encourages galleries to experiment and invest in emerging talent. An incentive to participate also for the younger galleries grouped in the Opening section. Among them, the Chilean gallery Espacio218 stood out, which won the Opening Lisboa prize for its experimental project that brings Noel Saavedra and Javiera Gomez into dialogue, with prices ranging between 1,000 and 15,000 euros. The owner of the gallery is artist Seba Calfuqueo, and in this role she just won the focus award at Frieze New York for her solo show with W-galeria in Buenos Aires. The Dialogue gallery in Lisbon, which is staging a generational confrontation between Goncalo Pena and Sara Graca, is also particularly popular. Pena, a popular professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Lisbon, creates a drawing a day, considers it an exercise in freedom, some of these drawings then become the starting point for paintings, quotations of up to 12,000 euros. Graca, on the other hand, is a young artist who expresses herself in a multifaceted manner, and one of her sculptures '42% Poliéster' was acquired by the City of Lisbon for EUR 8,000. The two artists are united by a certain conceptual irony and a continuous search for new forms of expression.
