ARCOmadrid 2025, Marta Minujín and new purchases at the Reina Sofía

Just before finishing Art Basel Miamiwith a outstanding Argentine presenceall eyes move to Madrid. From March 5 to 9, the Spanish capital will host the 44th edition of the contemporary art fair ARCOmadridwhich will feature the participation of nine Argentine galleriesas the organizers recently announced when announcing the list of participating galleries.

This announcement coincided with another relevant milestone: he Reina Sofía National Museum of Art Center presented its new acquisitionswhich include 400 works by more than 200 artists. Among them stand out the incorporations of the Argentine Ana Gallardo and Alicia Herreroas part of a strategy to enrich its contemporary Latin American collections. According to the museum, both artists “they bring feminism and irony as tools to explain both the material conditions of his own trajectory and the relationship with the colonial past.”

On the other hand, Reina Sofía also revealed its plans for 2025which include a large exhibition dedicated to Marta Minujínthe queen of pop art. La Menesunda according to Marta Minujínan experience immersive and participatory around the iconic installation created by the Argentine artist together with Rubén Santantonín in 1965, will be one of the highlights of the annual calendar. This project reaffirms the growing ties between Argentina and Spainanticipating a vibrant cultural exchange next year.

Organized by Ifema Madrid, the 44th edition of ARCOmadrid will have a selection of 179 international galleries in its General Program, in addition to those that will be part of curated sections such as “Wametisé: ideas for an amazofuturism”, Opening. New galleries, and “Profiles | Latin American Art.”

The Argentine presence at the fair will be one of the most significant Regarding Latin America, with nine participating galleries. In the General Program there will be Rolf Art, Del Infinito, Herlitzka & Co., Nora Fisch, Pasto, Ruth Benzacar, and W Gallery. Besides, Remote from Salta –the only one outside of Buenos Aires– will participate in the Opening section, dedicated to innovative proposals and new galleries, while Floating Island will be present in “Profiles: Latin American Art”, a section curated by José Esparza Chong Cuy that proposes to exhibit a single artist per gallery.

Within “Profiles: Latin American Art” artists such as Bárbara Sánchez Kane (Kurimanzutto), the Argentinian Mariela Scafati (Isla Flotante)and Jota Mombaça (Martins & Montero), among others, a sector of the fair dedicated to reinforcing the historical link between ARCOmadrid and art in Latin America.

Meanwhile, the central section of the fair in 2025, “Wametisé: ideas for an amazofuturism”, curated by Denilson Baniwa and María Wills, will explore hybrid forms of creation that combine human, vegetable, physical and metaphysical bodies. Among the 16 selected galleries will also be the Argentine Rolf Artwhich will present a project dedicated to Mapa Teatro, a transdisciplinary laboratory founded in 1984 by the Swiss-Colombian siblings Heidi and Rolf Abderhalden.

ARCO’s General Program will seek to reflect the strength of the Spanish art scene, with the participation of galleries such as Alarcón Criado, Elvira González and Sabrina Amrani, as well as international artists such as Thaddaeus Ropac, Jocelyn Wolff and Perrotin (the gallery owner who sold the famous banana by Maurizio Cattelan), among many others.

ARCO, along with the exhibitions that will be shown by different institutions in the city of Madrid, will attract the attention of galleries, artists, collectors, curators and professionals in the sectoronce again becoming an essential event in the calendar of international contemporary art.

Closing the year, on November 5, 2025, the Reina Sofía will inaugurate La Menesunda according to Marta Minujínorganized in collaboration with Tate Liverpool and the Museum of Modern Art of Buenos Aires. Currently exhibited at the Copenhagen Contemporary in Denmark, the installation will be in Madrid until March 2026.

As part of a program dedicated especially to women artists, The Reina Sofía will house a key work in the Argentine artist’s career: “La Menesunda” – “mixture”, confusion”, in lunfardo – is an environment with a labyrinthine structure that generates different multisensory stimuli in the visitor. In its original presentation on Florida Street in 1965 It brought with it both media scandal and massive success.

Finally, the additions of Ana Gallardo and Alicia Herrero to the Reina Sofía collection highlight the growing recognition of Argentine voices in the global art scene. While Gallardo moves between intimacy and the public sphere, Herrero explores intersections between language, economics, gender studies and colonialism.

Ana Gallardo He was born in Rosario in 1958 and during the seventies he began his artistic training in the private workshops of Miguel Dávila, Víctor Grippo, Juan Doffo and other artists. He held individual exhibitions both in the country and abroad and participated in the 56th Venice International Biennale (2015), the 29th São Paulo International Biennale (2010), and the 7th Mercosul Biennale (2009).

For its part, Alicia Herrero (Buenos Aires, 1954) is a visual artist whose work is displayed in installations, objects, sculptures and paintings. He received the National Award for Artistic Achievement 2021, the Fortabat Foundation First Prize 2019 and exhibited at the Mercosul Biennial (Porto Alegre), the Bogotá Art Biennial and the first End of the World Biennial held in Ushuaia (2007). .

With events of this magnitude, 2025 promises to consolidate the artistic link between Argentina and Spain on an international platform.