Piece by piece, without making noise, Juan Abelló and Anna Gamazo have assembled one of the largest private art collections for decades. Not only from Spain, but from the world. In fact, its treasures are often part of temporary exhibitions in the most sought-after museums, … who long for a loan from this catalogue, where the signatures of Goya, Canaletto, Van Gogh, Degas, Modigliani, Gris, Picasso, Bacon, Braque, Klee, Rotkho, Klimt, Kandinsky, Munch, Matisse, Bacon or Tàpies coincide, for mention some essential names. And so on to more than 500 masterpieces. Many of them have already headed south for the inauguration next week at the Unicaja Foundation Cultural Center (Plaza del Obispo, 6) of a large exhibition that will exhibit for the first time in Malaga a selection of these sought-after funds that in their Title says it all: ‘From Raphael to Bacon’.
The exhibitions
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Titles:
‘From Raphael to Bacon. Masterpieces from the Abelló Collection’ and ‘Hispanoamerica in motion. Photographic collection of Anna Gamazo de Abelló’ -
Place:
Unicaja Foundation Cultural Center of Malaga (Plaza del Obispo, 6) -
Opening:
may 14
From the Renaissance to contemporary art, the exhibition will cover five centuries of the dazzling artistic collection assembled by the financier and businessman with his wife, Anna Gamazo. The uniqueness of the Abellós is that they not only guard canvases by the great masters of Spanish painting, but also by sought-after international artists little represented in national collections. Thus, the catalog brings together very unique works, such as the portraits that Goya made of his in-laws or Spanish jewels signed El Greco, Fortuny, Joaquín Sorolla or Dalí, along with oil paintings by Bonnard, Toulouse-Lautrec, Van Gogh or Degas, among others. An artistic set that goes beyond painting as it also deals with drawing or sculpture.
Waiting for the Unicaja Foundation to reveal the complete selection of works from the exhibition ‘From Raphael to Bacon. Masterpieces from the Abelló Collection’, which will not be missing is one of the couple’s last major acquisitions, ‘Portrait of a Young Woman with a Black Cap’, an oil painting with Rembrandt’s signature that could well be exhibited in the Prado’s permanent collection , the Louvre or the National Gallery. Acquired at Sotheby’s with a final auction of 18 million euros, this painting, which is the image of the exhibition in Malaga, was believed to be a portrait of the artist’s sister, but now criticism points to an anonymous face marked for the serenity of the gesture and the fine detail of the protagonist’s pearls.
‘Buste’, a work by Picasso that is part of the Abelló Collection and was exhibited at the Casa Natal in 2008.
Ñito Salas
The exhibition in Malaga will be double since, along with the family legacy, Anna Gamazo de Abelló, the great inspiration of the couple’s art purchases, will also show her most personal side with her collection of photographic works through the exhibition ‘Hispanoamérica en movement’, which includes images of great snapshot artists, such as Adriana Lestido, Luz María Bedoya, Johanna Calle, Helen Zout, Claudia Donoso, Rosa Gauditano, Leonora Vicuña, Carla Rippey, Carolina Cárdenas, Milagros de la Torre, Paz Errázuriz, Rosario López and the Cuban María Eugenia Haya ‘Marucha’, among others.
Business and artistic legacy
With a PhD in Pharmacy, Juan Abelló began in the business world managing his inheritance from Laboratorios Abelló, a company created by his father. In 1976, at 34 years old, he signed Mario Conde, 28. Together they would sell Laboratorios Abelló for 4,300 million pesetas to invest in Antibiotics, a firm that was later acquired by the multinational Montedison in 1987 for 58,000 million pesetas.
The profits were directed to the Banesto that Conde would command, where Abelló remained in the background, in the presidency of La Unión y el Fénix. The businessman left the bank in 1989, before the disaster, and joined Airtel, which would later move to Vodafone. His company is called Torreal, of which he is honorary president, and, according to the latest ‘Forbes’ list, he is ranked number 8 among the great Spanish fortunes, with 2.9 billion euros.
A good part of this heritage has been allocated to the acquisition of works of universal art, a line marked by Anna Gamazo de Abelló. After remaining in the private sphere for decades, the couple began showing their collection a little over a decade ago. In Malaga, these private funds gave a sample of their dimension in 2008 with the exhibition ‘The paths of the stroke. Drawing with Picasso’, which exhibited some masterpieces by the father of cubism. However, it will be now that this collection exhibits its full potential with the montage ‘From Raphael to Bacon’.
