ESTE ARTE awards the second ESTE | Laetitia Prize in honor of cultural patronage to Martín Cerruti.
ESTE ARTE is proud to present the second edition of the Laetitia Prize, a recognition that celebrates individuals and organizations dedicated to the creation and promotion of art in Uruguay. This award highlights the invaluable support given to the dissemination and preservation of the country’s cultural heritage. It is a tribute to the significant role of patronage and commitment to the development of visual arts in the regional scene.
The prize is named in honor of Laetitia d’Aremberg, one of the foremost patrons of culture in Uruguay.
The statuette for this prestigious award has been specially designed by artist Martín Pelenur.
The jury for the Laetitia Prize includes Laura Bardier (ESTE ARTE), Martín Castillo (Galería SUR), Silvia Arrozés (Galería del Paseo), and Renos Xippas (Xippas).
2024 Laureate:
Martín Cerruti (1968, Montevideo) is a lawyer who for 35 years advised local and international companies, including several Fortune 500 firms, leading some of the largest legal transactions in Uruguay. He was a partner at Ferrere Abogados from 2001 until his retirement in 2023, where he led the Corporate and Commercial group, as well as the Mergers and Acquisitions group.
His distinguished career has earned him top rankings from leading legal publications in Europe and the United States. He has also been a professor of law at ORT University and the University of Montevideo and has participated as a panelist in various forums across Latin America and the United States.
Martín is a collector of Uruguayan art, a passion inherited from his father, with a particular focus on the Escuela del Sur. His collection is considered one of the most specialized in this field, attracting attention from museum directors, curators, critics, artists, and collectors worldwide. He is Uruguay’s representative on the Latin American Art Committee of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and serves as Vice President of the Francisco Matto Foundation and the Julio Alpuy Foundation.
He has contributed to numerous artistic projects, including lending works for exhibitions at prestigious institutions such as the Museo Nacional de Artes Visuales, Museo Torres García, Museo Figari, Museo Gurvich, MACA, Pinacoteca de São Paulo, Fundación Iberé Camargo, Fundación March, The Menil Collection, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, MoMA, and many more.
2024 Statuette Artists
Martín Pelenur (1977, Argentina) is a visual artist and cultural producer. Since 2013, he has been directing La Pecera in La Barra, Punta del Este, a self-managed space dedicated to the development of visual arts in Uruguay. His artistic career began in the late 1990s, and he has had numerous solo and group exhibitions both in Uruguay and internationally.
Recent exhibitions include Pigment Blue at Galería del Paseo in Manantiales; Cintas, concentración, repetición y deriva at Galería Zielinsky in Barcelona; Línea Aceguá at Centro Cultural Kavlin in Maldonado; and his current exhibition Línea Merín at MACA (Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Atchugarry) in Punta del Este.
Pelenur views painting as both a form of thought and an experimental practice. He explores the conditions of creation through exercises, systems, and procedures that he later repeats. Working in series, he uses painting as a perpetual experiment.