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For the 40+1 edition of ARCOmadrid 2022, we are pleased to present a selection of works by Argentinean artist Santiago García Sáenz (1955-2006). This selection of paintings was part of the recent Quiero ser luz y quedarme [I Want to Be Light and Remain], the first institutional and anthological exhibition of Santiago García Sáenz (Buenos Aires, 1955-2006) since his death, presented at Colección AMALITA – Fundación Amalia Lacroze de Fortabat, Buenos Aires, between July and November 2021, curated by Pablo León de la Barra & Santiago Villanueva.

Known during his lifetime primarily as a religious and naive painter, and with the help of the passage of time, the purpose of the exhibition was to turn around some past readings of his work and show a highly complex artist who, behind that intense religiosity fundamental to understanding the tensions and contradictions at play in his life and work, grappled in singular fashion with the major questions of his day.

In the same way, this selection of works cluster García Sáenz’s work around a number of themes, some of them urgently in need of attention: the cultural explosion in Buenos Aires in the eighties; the search for a Latin American identity in his work; sexual intolerance and martyrization; HIV/AIDS in relation to his work; and nature as space of freedom, heeling, and redemption.