Claudia Polar

Claudia Polar-Campos, director of the Galería Forum (Lima) died on March 25, leaving a great void in the Peruvian artistic scene.

Polar tirelessly dedicated more than forty years to supporting, promoting and encouraging all types of artistic activities at the local level.

Always at the helm of the Galería Forum—which already celebrated its 40th year of existence—she strived to develop an art market required of professionally run galleries that, although few and far apart for a long time, were essential for its consolidation.

Before that, young artists had been the most vulnerable element in the construction that defined the creative landscape. Along with other partners, Polar not only designed approaches for accessing the artworks—in an effort to encourage art collecting and to generate a greater interest in the art world—but also developed support programs for those emerging talents. By doing so, she established an institutional profile that has continued to this day and that reflects the diverse circumstances and structural modifications of the society in which she worked.

Polar was not only an enthusiastic promoter of programs, courses, encounters, and publications that reflected the local contemporary art, but was also an active participant in the new international promotion system, attending the most prestigious fairs and creating an art promotion circuit that represented Peruvian art abroad.

None of that would have been possible without a personality whose greatest attributes were an open mind, patience, tolerance and a sincere interest for the most diverse proposals, including those that criticized the system to which they belonged.

Following the intentions that drove her since the beginning of her career as a gallery director—with the goal of capturing the new terms for design consumption and adapting them to specific aesthetic criteria—she propelled the careers of prominent artists and encouraged these to produce utilitarian works that clearly conveyed the artists' personal principles and proposals, in an effort to bring images and concepts closer through accessible and attractive means.

Claudia Polar leaves a great void. But, most importantly, she leaves a compelling legacy of dedication, commitment and professionalism in the Peruvian artistic system.