Robert Harvey's friends auction portraits in memory of Don Roberto de Macharaviaya

Every year a disparate group of intellectuals, artists and Axarquía residents gather in Macharaviaya in Malaga province to pay respect to a man many of them never even met.

Robert Harvey passed away 21 years ago. Born and raised in North Carolina, the American painter left behind a group of friends that, surprisingly, is still growing. This is the "human legacy" of Don Roberto de Macharaviaya. He was known in the village as a man with a capacity to "make a family" that rivals the importance of his undoubted artistic quality. This is the only way to understand why 61 artists responded without hesitation to the invitation of an event in his honour. The impressive collaboration of Malaga-based artists will be auctioning their self-portraits this Saturday, with a starting price of 150 euros.

Lorenzo Saval, Chema Lumbreras, Fernando de la Rosa, Vargas Machuca, Rafael Alvarado, Paco Aguilar, Isabel Garnelo, Sebastián Navas, Sara Sarabia, Ignacio del Río, Ana Roldán, Concha Galea, Panamá Díaz Fernández and many more accepted the challenge to paint themselves for the eighteenth Encuentro de Amigos de Robert (Friends of Robert Meeting) which will take place on 7 June in Macharaviaya (from 1pm with an entry fee of 20 euros all inclusive). There will be music, art, good food and gin and tonic as a digestif - as there always was at Robert Harvey's house. The Huerta del Ángel is a cosmopolitan estate in the middle of the countryside, where artists and friends from Malaga met with others from San Francisco and New York over paella and good wine.

Human Legacy is the title of the artistic project chosen by the Huerta del Ángel Association for this edition. "After so many years, you realise that what lies behind the association are the people. It makes no sense without the people behind it supporting it," said Jorge Moreno Peña, exhibition curator. To represent this heritage, he asked Robert's 'friends' to paint themselves. A daring request because not all artists do self-portraits and, as Moreno Peña pointed out, "empathising" with another person or a landscape is not the same as staring at yourself in the mirror. But the response has overwhelmed them.

At the Museo de los Gálvez, in Macharaviaya, the 61 portraits spanning all imaginable techniques and styles in the exhibition are currently being assembled. Alongside the story of the hero of American independence, Bernardo and his family, there is a series of paintings showing the faces - some realistic, others figurative - of generations of painters linked to Malaga province. Each of them conceals the artistic identity of their creators. There is the diptych of Teté Vargas Machuca: her face is only half visible, but when the covers are opened, her whole universe unfolds with the pop-up technique, the artist depicted in different positions and moments, working, pensive, with birds on her head. Lorenzo Saval also multiplies in his work Autorretratos en Busca de un Autor (Self-portraits in Search of an Artist), where he creates small, amusing reproductions of himself in mixed technique.

Very recognisable, staring directly at the viewer from the same wall, are the faces of Sebastián Navas, Rafael Alvarado, Buly and Concha Galea, the latter with a powerful impressionist touch. Cayetano Romero is drawn amid a landscape of handwritten words, and Ana Roldán smiles at the visitor surrounded by vibrant colours.

Paco Aguilar features in an engraving which is not his usual figurative style, but could well be one of the strange characters that occupy his world. Chema Lumbreras surprises us in a work without his signature figures: the protagonists are a giraffe and a mysterious shadow. Fernando de la Rosa opts for collage on canvas for his self-portrait composed with fine lines on thick strokes.

In a meeting of artists there is no shortage of references to the greats. Arturo Meliveo winks at Matisse, Lola Díaz presents herself in Warhol style and Víctor Sáez adopts the position of Velázquez in Las Meninas, with Robert Harvey in the doorway - as in the photo in which he appears in La Huerta del Ángel - and with Marilyn Monroe and Rossy de Palma infiltrating the work. Faithful to her feminine and feminist identity, Isabel Garnelo features pubic hair in her piece. Sara Sarabia covers her face with text in Autocensura (Self-censorship), Sandra Carmona ties herself to her identity in a highly symbolic painting and Antonio Delgado rescues a photo from his boot from 35 years ago - taking on a fresh meaning.

The exhibition lineup is extensive and each piece has its own story. This Saturday the artists will be there to explain their artwork during the silent auction, where the public can bid on paper for each piece until the deadline. Half of the proceeds will go to the artists, the other half to the Asociación La Huerta del Ángel - guardian of Robert Harvey's memory. In the exhibition poster, hundreds of photographs from the 17 previous meetings make up the face of Don Roberto. At the event there will be a Polaroid camera to take up to 200 photographs of visitors, which will be instantly added to a new poster. Ensuring Robert Harvey's human legacy lives on.