ARCOmadrid 2025 Highlights a Buoyant Spanish Art Market

Despite the drizzle and clouds overhead, collectors, fairgoers, and gallerists from across Europe and Latin America gathered in force for ARCOmadrid’s 44th edition in the Spanish capital, which concluded on Sunday, March 10th.

Hosting 214 galleries from 36 countries—including nine international exhibitors making their ARCO debut—the fair is a highlight not only for Spain’s art world, but the art industry at large. About one-third of the booths this year were Spanish galleries, with strong contingents from Portugal, France, Germany, Brazil, and Argentina.

Vienna-based gallerist and former ARCOmadrid advisory committee member Rosemarie Schwarzwälder described the fair as “culturally significant throughout Spain,” with visitors from across the country. “It’s also ideal for collectors, who enjoy a well-organized program of museum visits and historical exhibitions alongside their visit to ARCO,” she said.

As this year’s edition illustrated, both ARCO and its home city are continuing to build on their storied artistic infrastructures to cater to new and experienced visitors alike. And as the sales reported from the fair and the mood across the city attested to, it’s a formula that appears to be working.

Spain’s King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia’s appearance at the end of the fair’s opening day on Wednesday signaled the fair’s national importance beyond the art world. Unlike privately run fairs that rely on income from galleries, ARCO benefits from public funding through its collaboration with Acción Cultural Española (the government’s cultural agency).

This is reflected in its thoughtful structure at the IFEMA Madrid convention center, which includes dedicated sections for new galleries under eight years old, curated installations (this year’s theme is “Amazon futurism” and territory), a series of awards for participating artists and galleries, and a comprehensive retail program spotlighting iconic Spanish businesses.

In celebration of the fair, varied cultural programming permeated Madrid’s museums and artistic establishments all week long. At the storied Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, a new show, “Proust and the Arts,” has just opened to coincide with the fair, and its exhibition on celebrated Spanish sculptor Marina Vargas will travel to the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Querétaro in Mexico, mirroring ARCO’s ties with the Latin American art world.

As visitors were greeted with trays of pastel de nata on the fair’s VIP day, joyous reunions between collectors and gallerists could be heard throughout IFEMA’s halls. “Everybody seems to be in a great mood while in Madrid,” said Harlan Levey, founder of his eponymous Brussels gallery.

Part of the fair’s appeal also comes from longstanding loyalty from collectors over the years. “We have people who come by the booth who bought a sculpture from us maybe 25 years ago, and we remember them,” said Patrice Cotensin, director at Paris’s Galerie Lelong & Co. Others, he said, are happy with what they bought the previous year, so they come to decide what they should buy this year: “There’s a kind of friendship with clients, which is very wonderful and specific to ARCO.”

Indeed, ARCO is defined by a palpable sense of connectivity and discovery: London gallery Waddington Custot’s booth, for example, featured works by 29-year-old Bolivian artist Kenia Almaraz Murillo, the youngest artist on its roster. “We learned about her right here at ARCO three years ago, when she won a prize for best young artist,” shared co-owner Victor Custot, whose gallery made its ARCO debut this year.

Galleries also leveraged the fair’s focus on Latin America as a chance to showcase and strengthen their connections to the region. “Madrid is the art world’s bridge to Latin America,” said renowned art collector Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo. The London- and New York–based gallerist Timothy Taylor, for instance, cites its strong collector base in the region, and its representation of the Antoni Tàpies estate, as relevant for its decision to return to the fair.

Others see the fair as a chance to learn more deeply about new artists. For Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, seeing works by the same artist across different booths can give visitors a better understanding of the artist’s practice. Case in point: Madrid-based contemporary artist Daniel Canogar’s mesmerizing LED installations could be seen at the booths of Max Estrella, Anita Beckers, and Wilde, the latter of which sold the work for €40,000 to the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.

Connections linking artists shown at ARCO and the local scene abound. Guests buzzed around Spanish sculptor Jaume Plensa’s meditative, large-scale alabaster heads as part of national newspaper El Pais’s annual exhibition—one of which, rendered from porphyry stone, also anchored Galerie Lelong & Co.’s booth. Pol Taburet’s large-scale paintings featured in both Mendes Wood DM’s booth and at the Fundación Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Madrid’s solo show of his works in collaboration with the Madrid City Council. Portuguese artist Joana Vasconcelos—whose work is on view at Madrid’s Liria Palace—was also featured at the booth of Baró Galeria.

Booths were bustling with hushed conversations as deals were inked. International galleries in particular came to engage with local institutions and must balance fulfilling customer appetite with securing institutional placements. ARCO director Maribel Lopez told Artsy that its recently expanded collector program welcomed some 350 international and 100 local buyers to the fair this year.

Belgian gallerist Olivier Meessen says he prefers to keep works available for the fair’s opening days rather than selling them in the preview stage, despite long waitlists. The strategy paid off: Madrid-based Chinese artist Xie Lei, who is represented by the gallery, won the first MACAM Acquisition Award for his work Double I (2025). It will feature in the private collection of Armando Martins and in his forthcoming MACAM Museum and luxury hotel concept in Lisbon.

Some galleries also use ARCO to double down on artists through solo booths, either capitalizing on previous interest or using the fair as a chance to educate the local collector base. Paris’s 193 Gallery is focused on bringing new works into each region, underpinned by the gallery’s commitment to representing diverse artists, said its founder César Levy. The gallery presented a solo booth of works by Ivorian artist Joana Choumali. “When we are in Seoul, we don’t show South Korean artists, and when we are in Spain, we don’t want to just bring Spanish artists,” he said. The gallery reported the sale of eight works by the artist for prices ranging from €15,000–€45,000 ($16,278–$48,835).

Similarly, Bologna gallery P420 showcased an immersive ode to Italy- and U.K.-based artist Adelaide Cioni, complete with floor-to-ceiling fabric painted by the artist that echoes the colorful geometric motifs of her six new works on view. According to co-owner Alessandro Pasotti, who has shown three solo booths at ARCO, showcasing a sole artist is one way to “be more unique in the context of the fair.” The gallery placed several works in private collections.

Harlan Levey’s booth was solely dedicated to new works by Polish artist Marcin Dudek, following a strong response to the artist’s work at a previous edition of the fair, and sold four works for prices approximately €20,000–€75,000 ($21,704–$81,391) apiece. Meessen, who took home the fair’s best booth award, presented a “duo booth” that contrasted the hypnotic, monochrome paintings of Xie Lei with the austere conceptual works of Spanish artist Ignasi Aballí.

Sales were suitably strong across all segments of the fair. At the blue-chip end, notable sales included an Antony Gormley sculpture for €550,000 ($596,684), a Daniel Richter painting for €420,000 ($455,650), and a Francis Picabia drawing for €200,000 ($216,976), among others, at Thaddaeus Ropac’s booth. Galerie Nordernhake’s sales included a work by Stanley Whitney for $650,000 and a work by Sarah Crowner for €200,000 ($216,976).

Elsewhere among the highlights, Jahn und Jahn sold an Isa Genzken collage for €70,000–€90,000 ($75,942–$97,639) to a Swiss collector, and a Jana Schröder work for €35,000 ($37,971) to a German private collection. Baró Galeria reported both institutional and private sales of works by Joana Vasconcelos, Eugenio Espinoza, Luis Salazar, and Tecla Tofano. Richard Saltoun sold a work by Bertina Lopes to an Italian private collection, as well as works by Samira Abbassy, Reena Saini Kallat, and Bob Law.

In 2024, The Economist named Spain its “Country of the year,” owing to the country’s strong economic momentum; encouraging sales reports from this year’s ARCO reflected a similar buoyancy in its art world. Still, Spain’s 21% value-added tax (VAT) on artworks dwarfs its European neighbors, who enjoy lower tax levels: France’s VAT on artworks is 5.5%, and Germany’s was reduced from 19% to 7% at the start of 2025.

This means the same artists at a French and Spanish gallery could sell for very different prices, said ARCO director Lopez, affecting Spain’s competitiveness in the market. Lopez describes this as a “tax on culture,” and supports galleries in calling this out as a problem. “The VAT on books in Spain is just 4%,” she noted.