The CAAM Modern Art Museum

Las Palmas de Gran Canaria · Category: Cultural spaces · Subcategory: Museums · Authors: Francisco Javier Sáenz de Oiza

At the old Casa de los Balcones, a mansion with a neoclassical façade built midway through the 19th century in the heart of the historical town centre of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, is the Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno (CAAM).

On 21st June 1985, prestigious Navarra architect Francisco Javier Sáenz de Oiza won the restricted tender to transform this old stately home in the Vegueta district, and former headquarters for the Banco de España, into a modern art centre that might join the select international circuit of great contemporary museums.

With a protection order on the old façade, Sáenz de Oiza crystalized in his project the consanguineous link between architecture and artistic creativity, while at the same time achieving the fine balance between the emergingmodernity in his two upper structures in pyramid form, which rather like a greenhouse, lets natural light into the building, with a perfectly preserved urban tradition maintained in the historical town centre of the capital. So, on 4th December 1989, the CAAM opened its doors to the public for the first time with an exhibition called 'Surrealism between the old and new world'.

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