Fundació Bassat

26.06.2024

  The Bassat Foundation has assigned an award in CAN Ibiza 2024 as part of its commitment and support to contemporary art to the artist Michael Staniak with LA BIBI gallery.  

Over the course of more than 40 years, Carmen and Luis Bassat have built up an important collection of works of art, which today constitutes one of the most representative collections of contemporary art made in Catalonia during the second half of the 20th century.

In 1973, one afternoon, after leaving work, Luis Bassat entered the Adriá Gallery in Barcelona. Three hours later, he had bought the second painting of his life and 35% of the gallery. Over the next seven years, he got to know many of the young Catalan artists of the time personally, visited their studios, took an interest in their work and tried to promote them internationally, taking advantage of his frequent professional trips to New York, which he achieved with Josep Guinovart: three of his works at the Guggenheim Museum, an exhibition of recent work at the Martha Jackson Gallery and an anthological exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum.

From that moment on, his love of art was joined by his love of collecting. The result is a private collection of more than three thousand original works, which since 2010 has begun to be made public in the Museum of Contemporary Art of Mataró, as well as in Bulgaria, Poland, New York and in a number of Spanish cities.