Gilberto Chateaubriand Collection, Rio de Janeiro Museum of Modern Art
With about 6,630 works, it is, among the MAM Rio collections, that allows us to form an almost complete panorama of Brazilian artistic production, from modernism, through the strong transformations in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, until the most recent manifestations. of contemporary production.
The exbition will cover about 50 artists, with works ranging from painting, printmaking, photography and sculpture, totaling over 150 reproductions. Artists include Tarsila do Amaral, Anita Malfatti, Helio Oiticica, Cicero Dias, Lasar Segall, Jose Pancetti and Guignard. Brazilian artists and foreigners who had a strong connection with Brazil were prioritized.
The Gilberto Chateaubriand art collection brings together over 8,000 works of art from various Brazilian movements and artistic manifestations. Born in 1925, Gilberto devoted most of his life to the love of art. He began collecting art in 1953 and set up the most complete collection in Brazil. As a collector, his role goes far beyond that of a mere buyer of artwork. Gilberto has influenced several generations of artists who have always revered him as a master and the greatest supporter of fine arts in the country. With a permanent policy of acquiring works of art, the collection has become a reference for our culture. Much of his collection is loaned to the Rio de Janeiro Museum of Modern Art, and the main works of the collection is paramount importance.
Biography
Gilberto Francisco Renato Allard Chateaubriand Flag of Melo (Paris, France 1925). Collector, diplomat and businessman. Son of Assis Chateaubriand (1892-1968), journalist who owns the Diários Associados business group and founder of the São Paulo Art Museum Assis Chateaubriand- Masp, Gilberto Chateaubriand has one of the largest and most important private collections of Brazilian modern and contemporary art.
In 1948, he is part of the first class of diplomats formed by the Rio Branco Institute of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and lives until the early 1950s in Rio de Janeiro. It begins to form its collection during a trip to Bahia, in 1953, when the painter Jose Pancetti (1902-1958) He presents it with the painting of his own, The Landscape of Itapuã, 1953. Later he acquires other works by Pancetti and paintings by Carlos Scliar (1920-2001). In the 1950s, he bought works by Ismael Nery (1900-1934), Lasar Segall (1891-1957) and other artists, and the art dealer Pie tro Maria Bardi (1900-1999), then director of Masp. At that time, as there is no systematic art market in Brazil, Gilberto Chateaubriand negotiates most purchases directly with the artists.
Between 1956 and 1960, she works as a diplomat in Paris, and acquires works by international artists. Back in Brazil, he decides to focus his collection on national artistic production. He sells and exchanges his foreign pieces for works by local modern artists such as Djanira (1914-1979), Guignard (1896-1962), Di Cavalcanti (1897-1976) and Tarsila do Amaral (1886-1973). Besides acquiring works in the studios, he negotiates mainly with Galeria Bonino, in Rio de Janeiro, which sells representative works of Brazilian modernism. In the 1960s, he attended the studios of Djanira, Milton Dacosta (1915-1988) and Maria Leontina (1917-1984)., in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, and lives with doctor Aloysio de Paula (1907-1990), director of the Museum of Modern Art of Rio de Janeiro-MAM / RJ, and Carlos Scliar, who now influences him in the choice of artists. That make up your collection.
In the late 1960s, in addition to continuing to acquire works by historical modernists, he is one of the first collectors to be interested in works that constitute the movement of the new figuration. It buys productions of young artists such as Glauco Rodrigues (1929- 2004), Antonio Manuel (1947), Carlos Zilio (1944), Rubens Gerchman (1942-2008), Wesley Duke Lee (1931-2010) and Carlos Vergara (1941), among others that, at the time, are little commercialized because of the political content of his works and for rejecting the institutionalization of his works. Gilberto Chateaubriand is also one of the first to draw attention to the production of Waltercio Caldas (1946), Arlindo Daibert (1952-1993) and Milton Machado (1947), for example.
At the same time, he founded Carlos Scliar and José Paulo (1922-2004) with Ediarte, the publisher through which he publishes books and catalogs by Di Cavalcanti, Pancetti and Guignard. In 1969 Gilberto Chateaubriand became an advisor to the art collection of the Brazil United States Institute-Ibeu Gallery in Rio de Janeiro. At the beginning of the following decade, he acts as a juror in two editions of the Summer Salon, in the same city, and his collection begins to gain public dimension by integrating traveling shows in Brazil and abroad.
In 1976, the book Contemporary Brazilian Art is released. Gilberto Chateaubriand Collection, with texts by the critic Roberto Pontual. The publication traces an evolutionary panorama of Brazilian art since the early twentieth century based on its collection. Ten years later, the second book on the collection: Between Two Centuries is released. Brazilian Art of the 20th Century in the Gilberto Chateaubriand Collection. With texts by Pontual, it shows an expansion of the previous study, with historical reading reconsidered on the basis of new acquisitions, including works by emerging artists in the 1980s, representatives of the movement back to painting in the national art scene such as Jorge Guinle (1947-1987).) and Leda Catunda (1961).
About the collection, the critic declares: “(…) Through it, the 20th century Brazilian art, from modernism to contemporaneity, has its most complete and best illustration. “Since both publications, most of the speeches on this collection publish ed in the national and international press describe it as an exemplary portrait of art history in Brazil in the twentieth century.
However, critic Frederico Morais, curator of the Gilberto Chateaubriand Collection: Portrait and Self-Portrait of Brazilian Art exhibition, the first to present the collection in São Paulo in 1984, considers that the set of works collected by the collector allows a reevaluation of the Brazilian art, but “it is necessary, however, not to confuse Brazilian art and Gilberto Chateaubriand collection. It would be a fatal mistake” About the organized exhibition, he says that in it the national artistic production seems “more expressionist than usual, slightly surrealistic (.. .) lyrical, emotional and intimate. ”
The Gilberto Chateaubriand Collection features around 7,000 works and is constantly expanding. Despite having copies of almost all periods and movements that make up the history of national art of the twentieth century, it is also characterized by irregularity, revealing, above all, the idiosyncrasies and preferences of the collector. It draws attention for bringing together works of paradigmatic names of Brazilian modernism such as Anita Malfatti (1889 – 1964) , Di Cavalcanti, Candido Portinari (1903 – 1962) , Victor Brecheret (1894 – 1955) , Tarsila do Amaral and Flávio de Carvalho (1899 – 1973). ), and works by young contemporary artists.
It features modernist canvas sets from the 1920s and 1930s, and works from the 1960s and 1970s. Until that date, the collection consists mainly of paintings and figurative drawings. In the following decades, the techniques diversify and the collection is also composed of objects, artist’s books and installations. In the 1990s, there is an increase in photographic works, as Gilberto Chateaubriand acquires works by outstanding artists during this period, such as Rosângela Rennó (1962) and Miguel Rio Branco (1946) . Another peculiarity of the collection is the large number of self-portraits.
In the early 1990s, an agreement between the Social Service of Industry – Sesi de São Paulo, and MAM / RJ, promoted the opening exhibition of the Sesi Art Gallery in São Paulo, an event followed by a series of exhibitions. themes developed on the basis of the Gilberto Chateaubriand Collection, over a period of twelve months, which contributes to its dissemination and prestige.
In 1993, Gilberto Chateaubriand transferred, under lending, about 700 works from his collection to MAM / RJ, which loses part of his collection in a fire in 1978. And after the reconstruction of the technical reserve, the collector becomes the largest part of his plays for the institution, which further expands the visibility and public dimension of the ensemble.
This Brazilian collection is part of the opening exhibition of the Pusan Metropolitan Museum of Art, North Korea, in 1988, as well as a traveling exhibition in Germany. In the same year, Masp promotes the show The Modern and Contemporary in Brazilian Art, hosting for the first time the works of this collection.
Gilberto Chateaubriand was president of the Friends Society of the Rio de Janeiro Museum of Fine Arts. He is a member of the International Council of the Museum of Modern Art of New York – MoMa, of the Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art, France, of the São Paulo Biennial Foundation Administrative Committee, of the Museum of Contemporary Art of the University of São Paulo – MAC / USP , of the council of the Imperial Palace , MAM / RJ and the Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo – MAM / SP . Away from his career as a diplomat, he works as a farmer, manages orange and sugar cane plantations on his farm in Porto Ferreira, São Paulo, where he keeps a small part of his collection.
Rio de Janeiro Museum of Modern Art
Created in 1948 , the Rio de Janeiro Museum of Modern Art occupies a unique place in the Brazilian artistic production scene because of its importance as a center for the diffusion of culture. The building, which has been in operation since 1958, was designed by Affonso Eduardo Reidy with gardens signed by Roberto Burle Marx, and is internationally recognized as a landmark of modern architecture in Brazil. It was designed to dialogue with the landscape: the horizontality of the composition contrasts with the profile of the carioca hills and the glazed facades bring in the landscape of Burle Marx. There is no distance between structure and final appearance. The free spans have a practical purpose: the freedom of composition offered to the exhibition space, the invitation to gardens on the ground floor.
With a prime location in Flamengo Park on the shores of Guanabara Bay, the Museum of Modern Art is a ten-minute walk from the historic city center, between the South Zone and the Center, with views of several Rio de Janeiro postcards. : the Sugar Loaf, the historic church of Outeiro da Gloria, the Corcovado and the bay itself.
Historical place of the avant-garde and experimentalism in the country, saw a considerable part of our artistic movements born and launched many of the most important national artists. There were countless events and artists that passed or had by MAM Rio a fundamental reference for the flourishing of his works, such as Grupo Frente (1954), Neoconcretismo (1959), Ateliê de Gravura (1959), New Brazilian Objectivity (1967) , Opinion 65 and Opinion 66, Sundays of Creation (1971) and Experimental Area (1975-1978), and the Movements of Cinema Novo (1960s), Marginal Cinema (1970s), Independent Short Film and Documentaryism (1970s) 1980), and the Contemporary Experimental Cinema (2000s).
Museum of Modern Art brings together the largest collection of international works, as well as important works by Brazilian artists. It is formed from personal donations, such as the collection by Esther Emílio Carlos; as well as companies, such as Petrobras, which allowed the acquisition of important installations by Brazilian artists, and White Martins, which is mostly made up of photographs. The collection today has about 6,600 works.