Juan José Litrán: “Bet for art was easily incomprehensible”

The corporate relations manager of Coca-Cola presented the agreement with the city Council of Alicante to present its collection after the rejection of the tripartite

A double shows of contemporary art will arrive in February of 2019 to the MACA and the fish Market with some fifty pieces of the Foundation

Juan José Litrán comes to Alicante satisfied. The director of corporate relations for Coca-Cola in Spain announced yesterday the signing of the agreement with the city Council to prepare a double exposure in 2019. After the rejection three years ago by the government of the tripartite to show the creations of his contemporary art collection, this time it seems that they are all facilities.

what Was a bad time to suspend the show for a political issue? “Yes. Whenever you start a project and you can not carry out by extraneous issues to it, you disappoint us and you generates a certain frustration,” he answers, after being presented before the media his plan. And he added that this feeling, “rather than by you, it is for the others who have worked with their enthusiasm for the job. And behind there is a financial part of a job that at the end is not done although, logically, would be charged”.

With three decades of work in the company of soft drinks, Litrán ensures that “the Foundation only gives me joys”. That’s why you want to leave behind the controversy lived with the previous municipal government, in which Simon rejected his proposal for the ERE which had been applied to the company’s bottling plants. “For good or for bad, the large companies are subject to criticism, misinterpretation and lack of understanding. That is the greatness and misery of being who you are. It is one more variable to handle”, says the manager.

hence, to highlight the words of the councillor of Culture, Dolores Padilla, who said that “it is an exhibition that is a pride to have in the city; I am lucky to be me who opens”. “What’s important”, she continues Litrán, “is that we are here with enthusiasm and eager. That made us strive more and look forward. Because looking at the negative doesn’t move almost nothing.”

Litrán was born in 1993, this area of the foundation, a milestone then in the multinational. “That year, when we fell 92 and we woke up the next morning engulfed in the crisis, there were many sectors with problems. And one that is very relevant to what today we call Spain “Brand, is the culture, which was becoming an orphan”.

The then director of the Arco fair in Madrid, Rosina Gómez Baeza, approached them with a different proposal. “The world of arch contemporary decays, because they have disappeared, the patrons of the individual. It is time to create a culture of patronage business,” recalls Litrán that told them. And so he managed to convince them that I could interest you in a beverage company to venture into a land that neither in Spain, nor in any other country outside the united States, had touched.

“This was a true local to an option risky,” recalls the director. How to bet on the contemporary art? “In the face of other needs was easily incomprehensible”, he says. Proposed various proposals as to buy boxes, do contests, and to stay with the piece or start a collection. The latter was the option that they chose to finally “because it allows to generate value and feeds”.

One of the things that they decided to take advantage of was the interest that was created around its initiative: “Every time we got in the Arc, marcábamos works with a sticker that would ‘Acquired by the Coca-Cola Foundation'”. Now remember smiling the “drink that was supposed to convince the artists and the organization” for other collectors, even comparative, “look what we bought”.

Born with a crisis, the Great Recession of the last decade, gave a twist to the proposal. After more than fifteen years running, went to buy more works to move it by the centres. “We had many works and currently buying yes that could be misunderstood. We would have had the risk of a poor perception, without no doubt. But it is also our business is not art. We have a collection sufficiently large to give a value. We are starting to use with more intensity the funds to provide for the institutions of their content,” he reasons. In times of cuts in the management of these cultural spaces, offer samples organized from the more than four hundred pieces. “We give it for free. The only thing we ask is that you give us a good space and they welcomed us with affection, to be able to work together for the benefit of,” he says.

In his speech, reiterates that “we’ve always wanted to generate well-being, even if it sounds pretentious, because when you work in a strong partnership and developed the business develops better.”

THE COMMISSIONER OF THE MUESTRALa proposal

Lorena Martínez de Corral is responsible for the contents of the art collection of the company. In mounts which will bring to Alicante in February 2019 advances that the base is to tell stories.

Dialogue

The exhibition will be double. On the one hand, in MACA they will choose works that are related to each other. Either by the artist or by the movement. For example, the works of Arcadi Blasco with that of Isidro.

Photography

In the Market will be more than thirty pieces which shall be of very different formats. The photo has a special role because in march we celebrate PhotoAlicante.

According to the criteria of

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