Marval Collection Award

Addressed primarily to emerging and mid-career artists, the Marval Acquisition Award consists of an acquisition to be added to the Marval Collection, a residency offered to the winning artist, and a targeted post on the Collection’s network to give the artist and gallery as much visibility as possible.

The Marval Collection was formed in 2018 by two collectors - Marco and Valeria - who decided to join forces by creating a foundation and a program to support not only young artists, but fairs and galleries as well.
Marval believes strongly in the art system consisting of institutions, galleries, and fairs that work daily to sustain skilled and talented artists who need visibility and assistance. Therefore, it supports institutions and fairs so that they may provide space to all of the artists who feel the need to transmit, through their work, something they deem important from a social, political, emotional, and economic perspective.
In recent years, Marval has collaborated with museums, private institutions, and fairs in cities such as Turin, Verona, Barcelona, Madrid, and Marseille, providing awards, loans, and acknowledgements. The Collection will participate in the upcoming edition of Arte Fiera with the Marval Acquisition Award.

Jury:
Claudio Cerabolini , collector
Matteo Lupo, collector
Tobias Arndt, collector
Marco e Valeria Curina, collector
 

Motivation: The jury was impressed by the immediacy of Guilherme Almeida’s works: created on sheets of newspaper, they represent famous personalities in Brazilian culture: the twins Tasha and Tracie, and the singer Jorge Aragao.
Their faces and bodies are painted over announcements, notices, and advertisements, with the unusual and iconic portraits taking up most of the page, covering some of the content and putting the people at the center.
Although their faces are known they have dark, rounded spots instead of well-defined eyes.
These paintings on paper recall pop images as well as studies from the late 20^th/early 21^st century that generated a new relationship among painting, sculpture, and urban culture. It is here that we see the meaning of the artist’s work: the message that art is universal and yet firmly rooted in a precise socio-cultural context. These figures simultaneously represent themselves and their entire community, with the intention of overcoming the platitudes by which Brazilian culture is mainly known and instead propose a new narrative.
On the other hand, the “golden smiles” are there to remind us of past events, a subtle reference to the dramatic history of slavery that the Brazilian people lived through, and from which it intends to free itself. 

Photogallery of the Award Ceremony