The great collectors of this country are in Barcelona. This city concentrates 60% of Spanish collecting, while Madrid would come to represent 20% and the rest is shared by all the others”, says Ernesto Gutiérrez, the director of the Madrid gallery Lorenart to explain his presence at By Invitation, the modern and contemporary art fair of the Círculo Ecuestre. Two of the most expensive pieces of the fair are sold in its space: Painting No. 60, a monumental Manuel Millares from 1959 (1,100,000 euros) and a Sorolla, La parra, which represents a woman supporting the artist’s daughter. so that I can reach some grapes. Its price: 850,000 euros. Gutiérrez is confident that between now and Sunday, when the event promoted and curated by Enrique Lacalle closes its doors, a buyer will appear. “Everyone is looking for Sorolla’s work and the problem is finding it,” he says.
By Invitation was born in 2020 under the impulse of Enrique Lacalle in order to fill, even in part, the absence of a great event like the one he himself tried to project without success in the early years of the 2000s. The paradox is that here, where artists such as Dalí, Miró, Tàpies or Plensa have emerged, and the great galleries are concentrated, there is no international fair”, concludes the gallery owner. The deputy mayor Jaume Collboni also admitted, at the opening ceremony, that the city still has “a pending issue”.
Judging by the proposals of the 23 galleries that occupy all the dependencies of the Diagonal modernist palace, the Barcelona collector feels a predilection for established Spanish artists: Miró, Picasso, Barceló, Plensa, Feito, Hernández Pijuan, Clavé… and works whose average prices, in the high range, are around 200,000 euros. “It is the artists who sell and the gallery owners bring what is sold,” admits Jordi Pascual, in whose space he exhibits an exquisite drawing by Miró, Le lever du jour, 1937 (220,000 euros) or a rare portrait of Pau Casals signed by Joan Ponç (75,0000 euros).
“For the last five or six years there has been a fatigue for the usual names and people want to discover others”, confirms Marc Domènech, who has transformed one of the rooms overlooking the street into a small museum. He wants to reach collectors with other names, such as the Portuguese María Helena Vieira da Silva (325,000 euros), Viaplana, Henri Michaux, Antoni Llena, Perejeume (her wonderful flying Jardí, a bird painting a moon with its beak).
“A fair is always uncertain, each time you start from zero”, points out Eduard Mayoral, who believes that in Barcelona it is difficult to sell million-dollar pieces. “There are collectors with the capacity to buy them but they are not launched. It is like a mental barrier, they can make this type of purchase at an international fair like Art Basssel but not here”, he argues between a watercolor by Miró (230,000 euros) and Gran ull, one of the most expensive Tàpies at the fair (220,000 euros ) of an edition that pays homage to the Catalan artist and whose presence goes beyond the stands and is projected throughout the building.
Although they are in the minority here, contemporary artists try to find a place in Lab 36, the Senda gallery space, which exhibits, among others, the photographer Xavi Bou, who captures the shapes generated by birds when they fly, or in Marlborough, where they share space With Antonio López or Riera i Aragó, Santi Moix presents a version of the large ceramic flower that he made for the church of Sauri (19,400 euros).
