Peek inside Madrid’s best-kept art secret

Madrid has always thrived on artistic tension: between heritage and rebellion, classicism and the avant-garde. The Prado, Reina Sofía, and Thyssen-Bornemisza museums still anchor the city’s ‘golden triangle of art’, yet past these marble halls filled with European treasures lies another Madrid, one shaped by the insurgent galleries and collectors that are placing the Spanish capital on the global contemporary stage.

The 2025 edition of ARCO Madrid gathered 214 galleries from 36 countries, turning the city into the art world’s spring focal point. But beyond the contemporary art fair’s temporary pulse, a constellation of cultural projects is now repositioning Madrid more permanently. The capital has become a hotbed of artistic proposals, with an increasing number of international collectors choosing to settle here.

At the centre of this momentum is the arts project Solo. Established a decade ago by entrepreneurs-turned-collectors Ana Gervás and David Cantolla, it has steadily become one of Spain’s most innovative cultural initiatives. ‘From the start, we’ve tried to remain on the experimental side of what it means to build an arts project: not too extreme, but also never taking ourselves too seriously,’ say Gervás and Cantolla.

The pair unveiled their first public space in 2018 on Plaza de la Independencia. It offers a mix of permanent and rotating exhibitions, and more than 1,200 works, but access is by appointment only, so a visit feels closer to a private viewing than a museum outing. ‘It was a turning point that allowed us to present ourselves to the public for the first time,’ they add. Further north, Solo Castanedo in Cantabria expands their reach with a rural outpost devoted to research and production.

Solo’s support for artists has evolved organically, too, from acquisitions and residencies to exhibitions and grants. The annual Solo AI Award, now in its third edition, funds projects at the intersection of art and machine learning, while the Artistic Support Program provides tailored career guidance, production support and international exposure.

In 2018, Solo made headlines with Memories of Passersby I, by Mario Klingemann, the first AI artwork to go under the hammer at Sotheby’s London: a pair of endlessly morphing portraits, generated live by neural networks. Beyond digital experiment, last year Solo Independencia turned to Juan Barjola, a key figure in 20th-century Spanish painting. His stark, expressionist canvases of twisted and distorted figures offered a grounding counterpoint. The exhibition was, for the founders, a deeply personal milestone.

Now comes their most ambitious chapter, Solo CSV, which resists definition, operating without a fixed programme and designed to reveal itself gradually. That might sound contradictory; after all, a gallery is, more traditionally, a space for public display. Yet for Gervás and Cantolla to reveal too much, too soon, risks reducing the place to a passing novelty. ‘More than a strategy, it is a philosophy that allows things to grow and find their own form,’ they explain. ‘What we want is to build, step by step, what this space can mean and how it can take shape. You might come across a work of art revealed only at a single hour, on a single day each year.’

Tucked into Madrid’s Moncloa-Aravaca district, Solo CSV carries the weight of history. Nearby once stood the Quinta del Sordo, where Francisco de Goya produced his haunting Black Paintings – works that would echo through the birth of modern art. The 4,500 sq m complex itself is a former printing press, once home to Semana magazine. After four decades lying derelict, the site was reimagined by Estudio Herreros.

Navigating Solo CSV is intentionally disorienting. ‘We aimed for every space to be simultaneously the interior of one and the exterior of another. And while each seems directly connected, that isn’t always the case,’ says Juan Herreros, founder and partner of the Spanish architecture studio, whose most representative project is arguably the Munch Museum in Oslo. At Solo CSV, a skeletal structure of reinforced concrete, all finished in white plaster, provides the framework, while additions were realised in dry construction, assembled on site by skilled carpenters and metalworkers.

‘It’s a kind of labyrinth where we can’t promise which part you will get to discover, but we will do our best to make sure you get lost,’ note Gervás and Cantolla. Visitors enter through steel doors still bearing their foundry marks, now punctured with Solo’s circular logo. Inside, a plaza opens onto a retro café and Bowman Hal, a gallery hosting shows in partnership with worldwide institutions. On display until 15 November are works by Aaron Johnson organised with the gallery Almine Rech. This will be followed by a Siro Cugusi exhibition and the launch of Movimiento 37, a network promoting exchange between galleries and artists.

From here, areas remain a secret, although Gervás and Cantolla reveal some of what’s to come. ‘There are some bright areas for reading comics, an art lab, and spaces for visual arts, films or video game sessions.’

Traversing Solo CSV feels dreamlike, its paths slipping from memory as if refusing to be pinned to a layout. What anchors the experience is the collection itself, a riotous choreography of sculpture, painting and digital works that shifts between the surreal and the confrontational. Canadian sculptor David Altmejd’s crystalline figures dialogue with Japanese artist Osamu Mori’s almost totemic wooden sculptures. On the walls are Neo Rauch’s surrealist tableaux and Gary Simmons’ chalkboard erasures. One of the most notable digital interventions is Dutch collective Smack’s hyper-slick animation Speculum, which reinterprets Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights for the 21st century.

Gervás and Cantolla are keen to keep thinking outside the box. ‘Our mission? To support contemporary art, to explore and to stay awake, resisting the temptation to become a recognised model for as long as we can.’ Solo CSV may be introverted by design, but it embodies the Spanish capital’s outward surge: a city finding its contemporary voice with equal parts confidence and curiosity. ‘Madrid has changed enormously in recent years, and its momentum is remarkable,’ the pair say. ‘We feel fortunate to live through this time and to play a part in it.’

Solo CSV is located at Cta. de San Vicente, 36, Moncloa - Aravaca, 28008 Madrid, Spain.

This article appears in the November 2025 Art Issue of Wallpaper*, available in print on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today