ARS Foundation Awards the ARS International Prize to Sculptor Efraim Ortega at ArteSantander 2026
- Press
- Jul 2
- 4 min read
Updated: Jul 4
The award grants access to ARS Foundation’s full internationalization program —mentorship, an institutional network and an international exhibition— and recognizes the career of the Córdoba-born sculptor, now based in León, at the fair’s 34th edition.
ARS Foundation is taking part in the 34th edition of ArteSantand er (July 2–5, Santander). The Geneva-based foundation is awarding the ARS International Prize to Efraim Ortega, a sculptor born in Córdoba and based in León, represented in Spain by Wit Art Gallery (Madrid). The award, fully funded by the foundation and valued at €36,000, provides full access to the ARS International internationalization program: a working tool designed to give the winning artist access to networks, institutions and markets that would be difficult to reach independently.
Efraim Ortega: From the Workshop to International Sculpture
Efraim Ortega (Córdoba) began his artistic career in photography before turning to sculpture, a discipline he first developed in Barcelona and later in Granollers, where he met Catalan sculptor Josep Plandiura and was introduced to ironwork, stone carving and woodworking at La Rectoría contemporary art center. He now lives in León, where, together with artist Jonathan Notario, he founded La Casa Magnética, a former 1940s Renfe railway building converted into a studio and exhibition space.
His work draws on disciplines outside the academic art world —industrial processes, electricity, electronics— and employs materials such as steel, stone, plastics and disused industrial heritage elements: 1950s relays, cabling and recycled railway materials. The result is a body of work with strong formal symbolism, built on balance and tension, through which he asserts an artistic outlook free of pretense.
Among his most prominent projects is the sculpture honoring railway women workers, installed at Valencia’s Joaquín Sorolla station on commission from Adif and unveiled in 2020. Ortega has also received the Premio Marte Nacional at MARTE — the Castellón International Contemporary Art Fair, and his work has been shown at emerging art fairs and spaces such as WeAreFair (Madrid), Art&Breakfast (Málaga) and BlurFair (Seville), as well as in the solo exhibition “IN AND OUT” at La Casa Amarilla (Málaga).
An Internationalization Program, Not a Symbolic Award
The ARS International Prize is not a symbolic honor: it is a structured support program for the internationalization of the winning artist, fully funded by ARS Foundation. It includes personalized strategic mentorship on positioning in international markets, curatorial branding and audience development outside Spain; access to ARS Foundation’s worldwide institutional network —museums and foundations in Switzerland, France, Italy, the Gulf region, Japan and the United States—; production of materials for international curatorial circuits; and mobility support through participation in at least one leading international exhibition project or showcase. The program runs over twelve months, concluding before July 2027.
“The ARS International Prize is not just recognition: it is a working tool. Efraim Ortega’s work, built from industrial memory and craftsmanship, engages precisely with the criteria that define this program. It is exactly the kind of trajectory that our institutional network can help project beyond Spain.”
— Jaume Torres, President of ARS Foundation.
ARTESANTANDER 2026: Four Days, More Than Forty Galleries
Founded in 1990 and backed by the Government of Cantabria and Santander City Council, ArteSantander is Spain’s second-longest-running contemporary art fair after ARCO Madrid. The 34th edition, directed for the third consecutive year by curator and cultural producer Mónica Álvarez Careaga, has been shortened to four days —Thursday through Sunday, July 2 to 5— and brings together more than forty national and international galleries from Italy, Germany, Portugal, Mexico and North Macedonia, alongside leading names in Spanish gallery representation, at the Palacio de Exposiciones y Congresos next to the Sardinero beaches. The selection was advised by Giulietta Zanmatti Speranza and Joaquín García Martín. Admission is free.
This edition arrives at a distinctive moment for Santander. In September, the city will open Faro Santander —the Fundación Banco Santander’s cultural center designed by architect David Chipperfield inside the historic Pereda building, spanning more than 10,000 square meters, with an opening program that includes the Gelman Collection Santander, featuring works by Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera—, in a city that is also home to Renzo Piano’s Centro Botín. ArteSantander is an inseparable part of that story of cultural transformation.
About ARS Foundation
ARS Foundation is a private, nonprofit Swiss institution based in Geneva with an active presence in Europe’s leading cities, dedicated to promoting and internationalizing European contemporary art. Through its own prizes, grants and exhibition programs, it works to give the finest artists access to the circuits, institutions and audiences they deserve beyond their borders. ARS Foundation owns The Embassy, an international agency specializing in Art Finance that supplies artistic projects and collections to the world’s leading hotels, consolidating a unique model that connects contemporary creation with luxury hospitality on a global scale.
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