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| Established | 1947 |
|---|---|
| Location | Avenida Paulista, São Paulo, Brazil |
| Director | Julio Neves |
| Website | www.masp.art.br |
The São Paulo Museum of Art (in Portuguese, Museu de Arte de São Paulo, or MASP) is an important fine-art museum located at Paulista Avenue in São Paulo, Brazil. Famous for the imposing building which houses its collections, it is an authentic landmark of the largest Brazilian city.
Listed as a non-profit organization, the museum is renowned for the extraordinary collection gathered since the end of World War II. Internationally recognized for its diversity and quality, the museum´s holdings are considered the most important of Latin America and all Southern Hemisphere, with thousands of works ranging in period from antiquity to contemporary art.
History
General context
At the end of 1940's, the state of São Paulo was already producing consumer goods in large scale to attend the country´s needs. As what it comes to the artistic scene, however, Brazilian´s most notable realization had been the Week of Modern Art, in 1922, not fully comprehended by Brazilian society yet. In this context, Assis Chateaubriand, founder and owner of the Diários Associados (Associated Dailies), the largest media and press conglomerate of Brazil, idealized the creation of a museum in innovating patterns, which should work as a dynamic center of cultural diffusion and creation.
At that time, the European art market was deeply influenced by the end of World War II, making it possible to acquire great works of art for reasonable prices. With that purpose, Chateaubriand invited Pietro Maria Bardi, an Italian professor and art critic - and also a skilled art dealer - to help him in the gathering of the collection. Planning to lead the project for only a year, Bardi would dedicate the rest of his life to it. He moved to Brazil, together with his wife, the architect Lina Bo Bardi, and brought along his private collection of Italian paintings and antiquities.
The first steps (1947-1957)
The museum was inaugurated and opened to public visitation in October 2, 1947, displaying the first acquisitions, amongst which canvases by Picasso and Rembrandt. In these first years of activity, the museum was located in the first floor of the headquarters of Associated Dailies. Lina Bo Bardi was in charge of adapting the building to the museum´s needs, dividing it into four distinct spaces: art gallery, a didactic expositions room about history of art, temporary exhibitions room and an auditorium. MASP was the first Brazilian institution interested in acquiring works of modern art. The museum would quickly become a meeting point of artists, students and intellectuals, attracted not only by its holdings, but also because of the workshops and courses about history of art, temporary exhibitions of national and foreigner artists, and the educative program, open to receive manifestations of multiple fields of art, such as theater, cinema and music.
In the 1950's, the museum increased its didactic actuation, creating the Institute of Contemporary Art (offering workshops of engraving, drawing, painting, sculpture, dance and industrial design), the Publicity School (actual Superior School of Propaganda and Marketing), organizing conversations about cinema and literature and creating a juvenile orchestra and a ballet company. The courses were frequently ministered by important names of Brazilian artistic scene, like the painters Lasar Segall and Roberto Sambonet, the architects Gian Carlo Palanti and Lina Bo Bardi, the sculptor August Zamoyski, and the motion-picture technician Alberto Cavalcanti.
Along with the amplification of the educational program, the museum watched the growth of the collection’s importance and the international recognizing of the institution. Between 1953 and 1957, a selection of 100 masterpieces of the museum´s collection traveled throughout European museums, such as the Musée de l'Orangerie (Paris) and the Tate Gallery (London), in a series of exhibitions organized with the intent of consolidating the collection. In 1957, the collection was also displayed in the United States, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and in the Toledo Museum of Art. In the following year, the museum´s holdings were presented in other Brazilian institutions, such as the Museu Nacional de Belas Artes, in Rio de Janeiro.
The great exhibitions promoted by the museum in these first years also gathered large notoriety, causing the increasing of frequency - which made possible the formation of an interested and rising nucleus of visitors.
Consolidation of the museum
The rising amount and importance of the collection soon required the construction of a building to headquarter the museum. With that purpose, the São Paulo City Hall donated a plot of ground, previously occupied by the Belvedere Trianon – a traditional meeting point of the city’s wealthy people, which had been demolished in 1951 to host the first edition of São Paulo Art Biennial. The ground on Paulista Avenue had been donated to the City Hall with the condition that the view to the downtown area should be preserved, throughout the valley of Nove de Julho Avenue.
Lina Bo Bardi conceived the new building of São Paulo Museum of Art. To preserve the required view to downtown area, the architect idealized a sustained building, supported by four big pillars. The construction is considered unique in the world for its peculiarity: the main body of the building stands on four lateral supporting pillars, generating a free space of 74 meters. Built from 1956 to 1968, the new site of the museum was inaugurated in November 7th by Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom.
Assis Chateaubriand wouldn’t get to see the inauguration of the museum´s new building. He passed away some months before, victimized by a thrombosis. The media empire which he had raised was also facing troubles since the beginning of the 1960's, with growing debts and the competition for the media market with Roberto Marinho's press conglomerate – causing the scarcity of the funds which had permitted the gathering of the collection.
The overthrow of Diários Associados and the death of its founder caused the necessity of using public funds to pay the museum debts contracted with foreigner institutions. During Juscelino Kubitschek government, the Caixa Econômica Federal granted a loan to honor the museum´s international obligations, therefore taking charge of controlling the collection. Some years later, at the beginning of the 1970's, the debts with Brazilian government were negotiated and finally remitted.
In 1969, attending to a request of the museum, the Brazilian Institute for Historic and Artistic Heritage (IPHAN) registered the museum´s holdings as national heritage. Then, the collection became inalienable, it is part of Brazilian public patrimony, and any movement of works of the collection to outside of the country needs authorization of IPHAN.
Notwithstanding the financial problems of the institution, São Paulo Museum of Art watches an even major growing of its international recognizing. In the 1970´s the museum gathered notoriety in the Eastern Hemisphere, organizing many exhibitions with selected works of its collection in Japanese museums. In 1973, the collection was presented at the Ministry of Foreign Relations in Brasília. MASP´s collection was presented again in Japan in 1978/79, 1982/83, 1990/91, and 1995. In 1992, works of the French school and Brazilian landscapes were exhibited in the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, in Santiago, Chile, and in the Biblioteca Luís Angel Aragón, in Bogotá.
The building
The actual building of the museum was raised by São Paulo City Hall and inaugurated in 1968, with the presence of Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom. It is famous for is remarkable brutalist structure and is considered one of the landmarks of Brazilian modern architecture. The building should be raised in the formerly site of Belvedere Trianon, in Paulista Avenue, from where it was possible to see the downtown area and the Cantareira Mountain Range. Joaquim Eugênio de Lima, the engineer who donated the plot of ground to the City Hall, had tied the donation to the express commitment that no edification should ever be constructed there that could harm the amplitude of the panorama. Therefore, the project demanded a subterranean construction or a sustained one. The architect Lina Bo Bardi and the engineer José Carlos Figueiredo Ferraz chose both alternatives, conceiving an underground block and a sustained structure, standing at eight meters from the floor, through four pillars connected by two huge concrete beams. Underneath them, lay what was considered a boldness: a free space of 74 meters between the supports, the largest of the world at the time. The building inaugurated the technique of protented reinforced concrete in Brazil.
In the construction of approximately 10,000 sq. meters there are - besides the permanent and temporary exhibitions rooms – library, photo gallery, film gallery, video gallery, two auditoriums, restaurant, store, workshop rooms, administrative offices and technical reserve. The building’s installations and finishing are homely, as Lina Bo herself describes: “Concrete in sight, whitewash, flagstone flooring covering the great Civic Hall, tempered glass, plastic walls. Industrial black rubber flooring covering inner spaces. The belvedere is a ‘square’, with plants and flowers around, paved with parallelepipeds, according to Iberian-Brazilian tradition. There are also water spaces, small water mirrors with aquatic plants. I didn’t search for beauty. I’ve searched for freedom”. In 2003, the building was also registered as national patrimony by Brazilian Institute for Historic and Artistic Heritage.
In the museographic area, Lina Bo Bardi also innovated by using tempered crystal sheets leaned on concrete blocks bases as display supports for the paintings. The intention is to imitate the position of the canvas on the painter’s easel. In the reverse of these supports, which are not used anymore, there were planks with information about the painter and the work. Paradoxically, the museum abandoned this model of exhibition at the same time when, at the end of the 1990's, it starts to be noticed and implemented by foreigner institutions.
Between 1996 and 2001, the actual administration of the museum undertook a vast and controversy reform. Notwithstanding the indispensable restoration of the general structure, the architect and current director of the institution Julio Neves determined the substitution of the original floor conceived by Lina Bo, the installation of a second elevator, the construction of a third underground floor, and the substitution of the water mirrors for gardens. Many architects allege that the reform caused a profound discharacterization of Lina’s original project.
The collection
The collection’s formation
The main body of the collection was gathered between 1947 and 1960. Pietro Maria Bardi, formerly owner of commercial galleries in Milan and Rome, was in charge of searching and selecting the works which should be acquired, while Chateaubriand had to look for donors and patrons who shared his dream of endowing the country with a museum of international standard. Although many spontaneous donations have been registered, Chateaubriand gained reputation of using bold methods of persuasion. Endorsed by the influence of his Diários Associados, he used to negotiate with the announcers the gathering of funds. After that, he rewarded the donors with the title of patrons, celebrating each new acquisition with banquets, speeches and even students parades in the streets of São Paulo, as happened at the arrival of Van Gogh’s The Student.
The international art market was passing through propitious moment for those who had funds to acquire high-quality works of art – there were many of them available in view of the end of the war, and Brazil was passing through a moment of prosperity. The works of art were generally acquired in traditional and esteemed fine art auction houses, such as Christie's, Marlborough, Sotheby's, Knoedler, Seligman and Wildenstein.
The bold methods used by Chateaubriand to finance the collection’s formation produced many critics. Along with these, there were others related to the fact that the museum acquired works of art without the proper corroboration of authenticity. This impression was endorsed by the fact that the museum was at the time one of the major buyers in the international market. Unlike other institutions which acquisitions depended of approval of a curators council, the São Paulo Museum of Art usually acquired its pieces quickly, sometimes by telegram. Thanks to this agility the museum was able to gather important masterpieces, even when facing private collectors or institutions of major renown and bigger financial resources.
At the end of the 1960's, Chateaubriand’s press conglomerate was facing troubles, with growing debts and Roberto Marinho’s media companies competition. The financial difficulties of Diários Associados caused the decreasing of the museum’s financial resources. Thus, after 13 years of great acquisitions, the museum started to increase its collection only by spontaneous donations of artists, companies and private collectors.
Overview of the collection
The São Paulo Museum of Art’s collection is considered the largest and more comprehensive collection of Western art in Latin America and all Southern Hemisphere. Among the 8,000 works of the museum, the collection of European paintings, sculptures, drawings, engravings, and decorative arts stands out. The French and Italian schools are mostly strong represented, forming the main body of the collection, followed by Spanish, Portuguese, Flemish, Dutch, English and German masters. The museum also keeps a significant collection of Brazilian art and Brasiliana, which witnesses the development of Brazilian art from 17th Century to nowadays. Still in the context of Western art, the museum possesses important holdings of Latin and North American art. In a smaller scale, the museum’s holdings contemplate representative objects of many periods and distinct non-Western civilizations – such as African and Asian arts – and others which stand out for their archeological, historic and artistic relevance, like the select collections of Egyptian, Etruscan, Greek and Roman antiquities, besides other artifacts of Pre-Columbian cultures and medieval European art.
Highlights
Italian School: Raphael, Botticelli, Titian, Tintoretto, Perugino.
French School: Clouet, Poussin, Nattier, Delacroix, Courbet, Manet, Monet, Renoir, Degas, Cézanne, Van Gogh.
Flemish, Dutch and German Schools: Hieronymus Bosch, Memling, Cranach, Rubens, Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Van Dornicke.
English School: Reynolds, Constable, Gainsborough, Turner.
Modern Art: Andy Warhol, Picasso, Leger, Modigliani, Matisse, Chagall, Salvador Dalí.
Brazilian Art: Frans Post, Nicolas Taunay, Tarsila do Amaral, Candido Portinari, Di Cavalcanti, Anita Malfatti, Lasar Segall.
Latin and North American Art: Torres Garcia, Diego Rivera, Siqueros, Calder, Burchfield
The museum also has some small collections of photographies, costumes and textiles, kitsch objects, etc.
External Links
23°33′40″S 46°39′21″W / 23.56111°S 46.65583°W / -23.56111; -46.65583
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