Helga de Alvear

Helga de Alvear, a feisty, fashionable German gallery owner who has lived in Madrid for over 40 years and runs her eponymous gallery, was the creator of the ARCO art fair and is one of the leading figures in the internationalisation of the city's art scene. Not that this is intentional: as she puts it, 'For me, art doesn't have a nationality. I don't care about nationality as long as I like it.' The artists she selects come from all over: British filmmaker Isaac Julien, Australian photographer Tracey Moffatt and Canadian artist Christine Davis, for example. Her collection currently consists of more than 2,500 works by Spanish and international artists.