Switzerland of Latin America for art

Uruguay can be the Switzerland of Latin America for art

The gallery owner Piero Atchugarry, who celebrates the first decade of his gallery born in Garzón, is the architect and witness of the magnet of the east for art.
He assures that his father Pablo, with the opening of the MACA in Punta del Este, was the spearhead of many current and future projects.
In the first days of the year the Uruguayan coast breathes international art. In addition to high-end tourism that comes from all over the world in search of that sophistication so characteristic of Uruguay, there are visitors curious to know what happens beyond the beaches. There are fairs, festivals, even museums and institutions that have only a few seasons left. Residences, new galleries and pop-up events in unconventional spaces proliferate. Important global curators arrive.

In these days alone, the Este arte fair is taking place there at José Ignacio’s Pavilion Vik and the second edition of FOCUS, the International Photography Festival with a great tribute to Sara Facio, among other important artists. Last year, in the brand new space of the Cervieri Monsuárez Foundation, it inaugurated a great solo exhibition by the Tucuman Gabriel Chaile and the John Baldessari exhibition that had been at the Buenos Aires Malba, at the MACA Museum of Contemporary Art, from the collection of Pablo Atchugarry, who also inaugurated a public art sculpture in Punta del Este last year.
These are just some of the main events of this January in Uruguay. “Uruguay can be the Switzerland in Latin America for art as well,” says the young Piero Atchugarry, a pioneer on these shores who celebrates the first decade of the gallery that bears his name, founded in 2014 in Garzón and now launched to the world. Back to the origins

Piero is the son of the famous sculptor Pablo Atchugarry, a national symbol for his enormous hand-made works – in marble and other materials – that are coveted throughout the world. Born and raised in Italy, as his accent reveals, Piero studied architecture, economics in London and then participated in the Christie’s Modern and Contemporary Art program in New York, with the idea in mind.
“My idea was to open a gallery in New York, I made an offer for a space in Tribeca in 2013 and it was then that I realized that I could start with something closer to my family and my origins: Uruguay,” he tells Clarín from the back room of his gallery’s second location, in Miami, during the last Art Week.

Literally an old stable from 1950, in the middle of an extensive 159-hectare reserve adorned with 15,500 native trees and shrubs, it became a gallery of primary market art, that is, with a staff of artists that it promotes. It opened with an exhibition by the Uruguayan artist Verónica Vázquez, who was very similar to the interests of the perhaps very young Piero Atchugarry, who was then 27 years old. His passion for sculpture was combined with a growing interest in conceptual art, painting, sensitive abstraction and constructive geometry.

“It was the impetus to want to start, to not have to wait for an ideal condition, which made me look at what was accessible, and to make it work in any way,” he reflects today. The stable, a unique space with high ceilings, was also 10 kilometers from Pueblo Garzón. “Not even those who went to the town knew about it, so I began to invite people, organize barbecues, exhibitions and the artists were interested from the beginning in the idea of doing something different and I always found a formula to make it work,” he defines.
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