Gilberto Chateaubriand: A Sensorial Collection
During his lifetime, businessman and diplomat Gilberto Chateaubriand (1925-2022) devoted himself to creating one of the most significant private art collections in Brazil. Featuring modern and contemporary works, his vast collection fuses tradition and experimentation and, through works by artists from different generations, languages and territories, it offers an exceptional overview of artistic creation in Brazil throughout the last century.
Gilberto Chateaubriand started his collection in 1953 during a trip to Salvador, when he acquired Paisagem de Itapuã (Itapuã Landscape) directly from artist José Pancetti. Over the next decades, he imprinted his own vision on the collection, choosing works that would eventually be included, often in direct conversation with their authors. Gilberto Chateaubriand knew the artists, visited them in their studios, and followed and supported their work processes. This intimate and engaged gaze, the result of what he himself identified as a ‘sensorial’ approach, built a collection characterised by knowledge and passion for individual works, as well as for artists and Brazilian art in general.
To highlight some of the qualities of what makes this collection so extraordinary, the exhibition is organised in five sections. Origins presents a genealogy, revisiting the 1981 exhibition that inaugurated the relationship of the Gilberto Chateaubriand Collection with MAM Rio, where a great portion of the collection is on loan nowadays. Portraits explores the collector’s special interest in artist portraits, a result of his desire to get close to the creators and their processes. Frontiers evokes his constant exercise of exploring unknown geographical, thematic and formal territories, offering access to art beyond what is familiar or established. Artists presents windows into the work of some authors with a prominent presence in the collection, showcasing Gilberto Chateaubriand’s interest in the artistic process as a whole. And as a horizon for them all, the great constellation that occupies the wall of the museum’s Monumental Room: a passionate manifesto for Brazilian art in all its plurality.
This exhibition, together with a second show that will open at MAM Rio in December, celebrates Gilberto Chateaubriand and his contributions to Brazilian art in the year of his centenary. The exhibition is organised in collaboration with the Instituto Cultural Gilberto Chateaubriand.