The Magnificent Roberto Polo Collection Comes to Toledo to Stay

The new Center of Modern and Contemporary Art of Castilla-La Mancha (CORPO) will host the first arrival of a selection of more than 400 works owned by the collector, who will lend them to the regional authorities for 15 years.

Roberto Polo before one of the works in his collection. Photo: Julian Rojas. At elpais.com

“To create a new museum in Spain is to sing a new song, not to show them what they already know”. This is how the collector and businessman Roberto Polo commented on his decision to create a double contemporary art museum in Toledo and Cuenca. Today, part of this initiative has already become a reality. During the interview with the patron at his home in Brussels at the end of 2018, Polo commented on the magnificent additions that the recently opened collection (it opened its doors on 27 March) brings to our country. His intention is clear: to fill certain artistic gaps that Spanish museums have not yet considered. Roberto Polo’s collection consists of more than 7,000 works, of which he will lend a total of 475 pieces distributed between two art centers. The first is in the old convent of Santa Fe, a magnificent building that began to be built in the 11th century and remained closed; now its architecture shines in all its splendor, dotted with works by artists such as Delacroix, Honore Daumier or Franz Marc, among many others.

En la cama con Roberto Polo. Interview with the collector by El Pais Semanal in September 2018

The opening of the new venue of the collection (which bears the name Center of Modern and Contemporary Art of Castilla-La Mancha – CORPO) will be accompanied by the upcoming inauguration of another space, located in the Tribunal de la Inquisicion of Cuenca, which will open its doors in 2023, when the complex rehabilitation of the building is finished. This event, fundamental for Spanish museography and art, has been possible thanks to the collaboration between Roberto Polo, the journalist Rafael Sierra and the Government of Castilla-La Mancha. The works will remain in the two venues for 15 years, a period subject to renewal. The project includes the arrival in our country of works by great figures of the avant-gardes such as Max Ernst, Kurt Schwitters or El Lissitzky, artists whose presence in Spanish picture galleries is practically nonexistent (with exceptions). The Convent of Santa Fe project has been signed by the architect Juan Pablo Rodriguez Frade, a professional endorsed by his interventions in centers such as the Abstract Museum of Cuenca and the National Archaeological Museum.

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