Carasso Stories:
Pepa and Carlos

Socially engaged art

There are stories that write themselves based on infinite affection. Today’s has ingredients intermingled with great emotions. Of course, it is about telling you the adventure of a farewell and a welcome.

An artistic transition, impossible to call it anything else, between Carlos Almela and Pepa Octavio de Toledo. This week Carlos passes the baton to Pepa to coordinate the Citizen Art axis of the Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation in Spain.

Carlos Almela started almost a decade ago at the Nina and Daniel Carasso Foundation. A professional growth linked to us. Her beginnings at the headquarters in France, doing internships first in Arte Ciudadano and shortly after supporting art and communication, with Marie-Stéphane Maradeix, our general delegate, were full of enthusiasm. The same one he transmitted when he arrived at the Madrid office. Here, his special sensitivity and his gaze were key to the development of our work in the first phase of implementation. His passion adding to the drawing of the citizen art strategy since 2015, the moments of hard work and many laughs with Anastassia Makridou, our head of Citizen Art, with the whole team that was incorporated little by little and, of course, with me from the beginning, his enthusiasm in each project he undertook made Carlos a very appreciated collaborator. Now, Carlos is going to be with his hands in the artistic ‘mass’, and his imprint will remain forever. A path of success awaits you, we know it, and we write it with marked sensitivity.

This sensitivity is strongly linked to a very different one: the immense enthusiasm and joy we have when we welcome Pepa Octavio de Toledo. The ingredients of great professionalism and delicacy are part of its essence. How lucky we are at the Foundation to have her! Pepa has an immensely rich and plural profile, her career has permeated cultural institutions and foundational sectors: she was part of the driving team of Matadero Madrid, she led the partnerships of the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum in a masterful way during the last six years, an extremely complex period in the cultural sector. His tastes and artistic knowledge have touched all his projects like magic wands and we are immensely eager to share views and horizons.

Now, at the Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation, we are embarking on a new path with Pepa in which we will continue, with the whole team, to support initiatives of great originality and commitment, special, small, as well as other more disruptive and different ones in more classic environments. We will continue to investigate how it transforms a motor art of citizenship, an art sensitive to our vulnerabilities as a species. We will continue to research, communicate and disseminate the very high value of culture in the construction of a fairer and more sustainable future.

Carlos, Pepa: you are part of our pages.
Stories to tell you. Carasso Stories.