Argentine art in Madrid

Argentine art in Madrid: ARCOmadrid 2025, Marta Minujín and new purchases at the Reina Sofía

At the 44th edition of ARCOmadrid, Argentine art will be present with the participation of nine galleries.
The Museo Reina Sofía will also celebrate local work with acquisitions by Ana Gallardo and Alicia Herrero.
In addition, the same museum announced a major exhibition dedicated to Marta Minujín.
With Art Basel Miami coming to a close, with a prominent Argentine presence, all eyes are on Madrid. From March 5 to 9, the Spanish capital will host the 44th edition of the contemporary art fair ARCOmadrid, which will feature the participation of nine Argentine galleries, as recently announced by the organizers when announcing the list of participating galleries.
This announcement coincided with another relevant milestone: the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía presented its new acquisitions, which include 400 works by more than 200 artists. Among them, the additions of Argentine artists Ana Gallardo and Alicia Herrero stand out, as part of a strategy to enrich its contemporary Latin American collections. According to the museum, both artists “bring feminism and irony as tools to explain both the material conditions of their own career and the relationship with the colonial past.”
On the other hand, the Reina Sofía also revealed its plans for 2025, which include a major exhibition dedicated to Marta Minujín, the queen of pop art. La Menesunda according to Marta Minujín, an immersive and participatory experience 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 Spain, anticipating a vibrant cultural exchange for next year.
Organized by Ifema Madrid, the 44th edition of ARCOmadrid will feature 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".
Argentine presence

The Argentine presence at the fair will be one of the most significant in regards to 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 Galería. In addition, Remota de Salta –the only one outside Buenos Aires– will participate in the Opening section, dedicated to innovative proposals and new galleries, while Isla Flotante 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 Argentine Mariela Scafati (Isla Flotante), and Jota Mombaça (Martins & Montero), among others, will participate, a sector of the fair dedicated to strengthening the historical link between ARCOmadrid and art in Latin America.
Meanwhile, the central section of the fair in 2025, "Wametisé: ideas for an Amazonian futurism", curated by Denilson Baniwa and María Wills, will explore hybrid forms of creation that combine human, vegetal, physical and metaphysical bodies. Among the 16 selected galleries will also be the Argentine Rolf Art, which 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 Programme 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 ones such as Thaddaeus Ropac, Jocelyn Wolff and Perrotin (the gallery owner who sold Maurizio Cattelan's famous banana), among many others.

ARCO, together 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 sector, once again becoming an essential event in the international contemporary art calendar.
Closing the year, on 5 November 2025, the Reina Sofía will inaugurate La Menesunda according to Marta Minujín, organised in collaboration with Tate Liverpool and the Museum of Modern Art in Buenos Aires. Currently on display at the Copenhagen Contemporary in Denmark, the installation will be in Madrid until March 2026.

As part of a programme dedicated especially to women artists, the Reina Sofía will host a key work in the career of the Argentine artist: "La Menesunda" –"mixture", "confusion" in lunfardo– is a labyrinthine structured setting that generates different multisensory stimuli in the visitor. In its original presentation on Florida Street in 1965, it caused both media scandal and massive success.
Reina Sofía Collection

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 the private and public spheres, Herrero explores intersections between language, economics, gender studies and colonialism.

Ana Gallardo was born in Rosario in 1958 and during the 1970s began her artistic training in the private workshops of Miguel Dávila, Víctor Grippo, Juan Doffo and other artists. She has held solo exhibitions both in the country and abroad and participated in the 56th Venice International Biennial (2015), the 29th São Paulo International Biennial (2010), and the 7th Mercosul Biennial (2009).
For her part, Alicia Herrero (Buenos Aires, 1954) is a visual artist whose work unfolds in installations, objects, sculptures and paintings. He received the National Award for Artistic Career 2021, the First Prize of the Fortabat Foundation 2019 and exhibited at the Bienal do Mercosul (Porto Alegre), the Bogotá Art Biennial and the first Biennial of the End of the World held in Ushuaia (2007).

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