Helga de Alvear
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Helga de Alvear is a Spanish art collector. She was born in the city of Kirn/Nahe (Rheinland-Pfalz), Germany, in 1936. She studied at the Salem School near Lake Constance, and subsequently in Lausanne and Geneva, Switzerland. She furthered her studies afterwards in London for a year. In 1957 she travelled to Spain to learn Spanish and met the architect Jaime de Alvear. They married in 1959 and she set up residence in Madrid. They have three children, Maria, Ana and Patricia. In 1967 Helga de Alvear met Juana Mordó and began what would later turn into her art collection. She came into contact with artists from the Cuenca group and from the El Paso group and she became increasingly interested in the Spanish art scene. In January 1980 she started to work at the Juana Mordó gallery: those were years of apprenticeship, both in relation to management and to honing her knowledge about international art scene, particularly thanks to attending art fairs such as Art Basel, the FIAC in Paris and the Cologne Fair. Furthermore, in 1982 art galleries took a step towards innovating the Spanish scene by establishing the ARCO art fair.
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Galería Helga de Alvear, Madrid
As time passed, Helga de Alvear’s stayed involvemend at the Juana Mordó gallery until in 1984, when Juana died, she took the helm. Over the next 10 years she followed in the artistic and professional footsteps of her mentor. In 1995, she decided to take a turn in her career by opening a new gallery under her own name in a space measuring more than 900 square metres next to the Reina Sofía Museum. Her latest project championed international contemporary art with a special emphasis on photography, video and installation – at a time when these mediums were practically unknown in Spain. Today, Helga de Alvear’s project is one of the best-established and longest-running art galleries on the Spanish scene.[citation needed] and it has earned widespread international acclaim. Helga de Alvear has been awarded the Medal of Extremadura in 2007, the Gold Medal for Merit in the category of Fine Arts in 2008, which is bestowed by the Spanish Ministry of Culture, the Medal of Cáceres in 2011 and Fundación Arte y Mecenazgo Award in the category of Collector in 2012.[citation needed]
Helga de Alvear Collection
While carrying out her professional duties Helga de Alvear has been able to give free rein to her grand passion: art collecting. At the present time her Collection includes more than 2,500 pieces by Spanish and international artists. The Collection will be donated to the Regional Government of Extremadura and the Centre of Visual Arts is currently being built in the city of Cáceres to house it. It has already hosted four monographic exhibitions:
- Margins of silence (2010)
- Stories of material life (2011)
- Approaches I. Contemporary Spanish Art in Helga de Alvear Collection (2011)
- Juegos de lenguaje. An introduction to the art of our times (2012)
The mission of the Collection is also to contribute to public awareness about art and it often loans out works to institutions around the world. In addition, it has been the subject of a number of in-depth exhibitions, most importantly:
- In 2005 at the Wäinö Aaltosen Museum in Turku (Finland)
- In 2005 at the MEIAC in Badajoz (Spain)
- In 2006 at the Belem Centre in Lisbon (Portugal)
- In 2008 at the Falckenberg Collection Centre in Hamburg (Germany)
- In 2012 in CGAC in Santiago de Compostela (Spain)
References
- OBRIST, Hans Ulrich (Ed.). Conversations in Cáceres with Hans Ulrich Obrist. Cáceres: Centro de Artes Visuales Fundación Helga de Alvear, 2012. ISBN 978-84-934916-3-5
- WYSS, Kurt. Looking back at Art Basel. Basel: Schwabe AG Verlag, 2009. ISBN 978-3-7965-2604-6
- HERSTATT, Claudia. Women Gallerists in the 20th and 21st Centuries. Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz Verlaj, 2008. ISBN 978-3-7757-1975-9
- BENHAMOU-HUET, Judith. Global Collectors/Collectionneurs du monde. Prologue by Samuel Keller. Paris: Éditions Phébus, 2008; Bordeaux: Éditions Cinq Sens, 2008. 478 p. ISBN 978-2-75-290328-0.
