Helga de Alvear, an art dealer who helped lay the groundwork for Arco Madrid fair, died on February 2 at 88. The Helga de Alvear Foundation and the Helga de Alvear Museum announced the news of her death in a joint statement on February 3.
The German-Spanish dealer was born Helga Müller Schätzel to an industrialist in Kirn, Germany, in 1936. After attending schools in Switzerland and London, England, she traveled to Spain, where she learned Spanish and visited museums such as the Prado in Madrid. There, she met and married architect Jaime de Alvear in 1959. Together, they raised three children.
The opportunity for larger involvement in the country’s growing art scene didn’t arise until 1967, when Alvear met Madrid gallery owner Juana Mordó and joined his enterprise.
In 1982, Alvear pushed for the establishment of Arco Madrid, now in its 44th edition. Following Mordó’s death in 1984, Alvear took the helm and continued Mordó’s legacy.
In 1995, she opened a space in her own name close to the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid. Championing photography, video, and installation art before these mediums became popular in Spain, Alvear oversaw a roster that included the duo Elmgreen & Dragset, the photographer Axel Hütte, and the filmmaker Isaac Julien.
At the same time that she sold art from her gallery, she also bought works for herself, amassing a 3,000-piece collection. Alvear established the Helga de Alvear Foundation in 2006 and a visual arts center in 2010. In 2021, she opened her own contemporary art museum, the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Helga de Alvear, in Cáceres, Spain.
“I buy art that interests me, but always works and not the names of the artists,” Alvear told Monopol in 2014. “Above all, I have to fall in love with a work of art before it can become part of my collection. And before I exhibit an artist’s works, I first buy a few of his works to see whether they will continue to be interesting when I live with them.”
Alvear earned many includes, including the Medal of Extremadura in 2007; the Gold Medal for Merit in Fine Arts, awarded by the Ministry of Culture of Spain, in 2008; the Cross of the Order of Civil Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 2014; the International Medal of the Arts of the Community of Madrid in 2020; and the Medal for Cultural Merit of the Portuguese Republic in 2024.
Credit: Source link
