The Foundation

Introduction
The Fundación Ernesto Ventós, as a family project full of enthusiasm and a keen sense of responsibility, arose from a need to share with society through art and the olfactory world part of what it has given us.

Formally, the Foundation was created in 2019, but the range of activities aimed at sharing with others began many years earlier, with the first acquisitions for colección olorVISUAL in 1996 and with NASEVO in 2003.

Putting together an art collection and not sharing it is something that makes no sense to us. From the very first moment, colección olorVISUAL has had a clear purpose: to teach us to smell by way of contemporary art.

Mission
The principal aim of the Fundación Ernesto Ventós – to teach us to smell through art, while furthering our appreciation of contemporary art – is one in which the social commitment of the art collector becomes reality.

Vision
The Fundación Ernesto Ventós seeks to be exemplary, as a one-of-a-kind private collection, and as an engine of knowledge and understanding in two areas: art education and olfactory education.

Values
The colección olorVISUAL and NASEVO were not intended to be shup up in a storeroom. For many years now they have gone out to meet the public, one of their reasons for existing. The collection works to make contemporary art better known, while NASEVO, sets out to relate art to the fascinating and largely unknown world of smell. The educational programmes are tailored to the needs of children, adults and groups with diverse abilities. It is this special sensitivity that characterizes them – something as delicate as an essence, which nonetheless leaves its mark on those who come into contact with it.

Another important goal is to contribute to increasing artistic sensibility in the community and to understanding the world of art in a different way, through smell.

In addition to educating people in the sense of smell and making the collections more widely known, we also support the artists who are the real protagonists, without whom the works – and therefore the collections – would not exist. Thus, through our patronage, we help to enable artists to produce new work and so add to the collection.

Aims
– To generate interest in the sense of smell
– To stimulate the use of the sense of smell
– To awaken the olfactory memory
– To highlight the importance of the sense of smell
– To match artworks and smells
– To publicize the collections
– To promote the artists that created them
– To encourage an interest in contemporary art
– To explain the disciplines through which contemporary art expresses itself

In short: «to teach people to smell through art».