Meet Nuria Madrenas, the founder of Tacit!

Nuria has a background in marketing and communications and has worked with the likes of Holt Renfrew, NARS, and Givenchy. She’s also an illustrator and after recognizing a pretty major gap in the market, she went on to found Tacit in Toronto in 2019 with a mission of connecting female artists with consumers. What’s the gap you might ask? In North America, work by female artists accounts for only 2% of art sold. Let that sink in for a moment. To further emphasize the gap, here are some more statistics:

• In 2018, a 1992 painting from Jenny Saville sold at Sotheby’s for $12.5M USD, setting a world record for a living female artist. This record is only 14% of the record for a living male artist at auction (Jeff Koons’s Rabbit sold for $91.1M). Link
• According to the Global Art Market Report in 2019, “of the 3,050 galleries in the Artsy database, 10% represent not a single woman artist, while only 8% represent more women than men. Almost half represent 25% or fewer women.” (Note: Artsy is a massive online platform for buying and selling art; they have over 1M works!) Link
• In 2019, The New York Times reported that “in the past decade, only 11 percent of all work acquired by the top museums [in the United States] was by women” and “Of the roughly 5,800 female artists whose works were acquired, 190 women — or just 3 percent — were African-American”. Link

Enter: Tacit. Tacit offers prints, limited edition art and originals from a wonderfully curated group of female artists from around the world. They also give 50% of profits directly to the artists and partner with local charitable organizations that align with Tacit’s values. Nuria is focused on helping extend the artists’ reach, and leverages her marketing skills to do so.

I am always on the hunt for great art, and particularly love finding pieces where I can learn a little bit about the artist. I stumbled across Tacit a little while ago and fell in love with their mission and artists. The website does a wonderful job of spotlighting the artists – at minimum you’ll find out where the artists are from, and in some cases there is a larger bio including how they got into their craft, a little bit about their aesthetic and mediums, and some background on their inspiration. You can also read short interviews with some of the artists in the Studio Sessions series.

Not sure what piece to add to your collection? Use Tacit’s art curation and installation services offered here (more on this below!).

I highly encourage you to take some time to peruse the website and perhaps you’ll be inspired to add one of the incredible pieces to your collection. In the meantime, read on for 20 questions with Nuria!

Figure Study 1 by Toronto-based illustrator Sabina Fenn (shop here). Captured by Tacit.