Gilberto Chateaubriand, 2008, MAM RIO, series “The negatives are in my possession”. Photo: Vicente de Mello

The most iconic image of the collector Gilberto Chateaubriand (1925 – 2022), taken in 2008 by Vicente de Mello, has gained three-dimensionality for the centenary celebration of his birth at the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro. The dozens of paintings in the museum's monumental space, placed there only for a photograph for a French magazine, have now been almost all reassembled to compose the exhibition "Gilberto Chateaubriand: a sensory collection," curated by Pablo Lafuente and Raquel Barreto. At the time, the curator of MAM Rio was Reynaldo Roels Jr. (1951 – 2009). "It was like doing a flash mob," recalls Vicente.

It is quite an impressive start to honoring the collector who practically saved the museum, which lost 50% of its collection in a fire in 1978. Since 1993, approximately 6.400 pieces have been gradually incorporated into the MAM Rio collection. In total, 8.300 pieces comprise the Gilberto Chateaubriand Collection.

On that monumental wall are some of the collection's masterpieces, such as Urutu (1928), by Tarsila do Amaral, which, in the photo, was on an easel the collector was looking at. The painting is one of the few works from the artist's anthropophagic phase and is worth millions of reais. Also there is O Farol (1915), by Anita Malfatti, a work purchased at an exhibition in São Paulo, one of the collector's most prideful pieces. "I've been offered fortunes for that painting, but I don't sell my works," Gilberto told me many years ago.

The exhibition also features four other sections, such as Origins, which revisits the first major exhibition of Gilberto's collection at MAM Rio, held in 1981, called From Modern to Contemporary. It includes works ranging from The Japanese Woman by Malfatti to one of Lygia Clark's iconic Bicho pieces.

In the same collection is his first acquisition, Paisagem de Itapoã (Landscape of Itapoã), purchased directly from the artist, the painter José Pancetti (1902–1958), in 1953, at his studio in Salvador, Bahia, where the diplomat was at the invitation of another collector, the journalist Odorico Tavares. Visiting artists' studios became a routine that Gilberto maintained until near his death. He enjoyed getting to know the creative environment, spending time with and befriending the artists whose works he purchased, and he was universally admired among artists.
During the period of the military dictatorship, Gilberto acquired many works considered subversive as a way of supporting figures such as Glauco Rodrigues, Antonio Manuel, Carlos Zílio, and Carlos Vergara, who sold nothing due to their political themes. All of them are represented in the exhibition at MAM Rio.

Another core group, called Fronteiras (Borders), reflects the collector's interest in artists working in contexts outside the Rio-São Paulo axis, a practice that has existed since the beginning of the collection. In 2002, I participated with Gilberto on the jury of the Salão Nacional de Goiás (National Salon of Goiás), in Goiânia. In our free time, we visited the studios of several artists, such as Antonio Poteiro, Pitágoras, and Marcelo Solá, and he left the city with no less than 30 new works. Poteiro and Pitágoras are also in the exhibition at MAM Rio.

Abstract art, incidentally, is not a style with a strong presence in Gilberto's collection. One of his obsessions, in fact, is portraits and self-portraits, which makes figurative art predominant in his collection. "When I started collecting, I had to make a choice, because I felt I couldn't buy everything, so I dedicated myself to figurative art," he said.

That's why another section of the exhibition is called Portraits. Gilberto himself appears in several of them, whether in a painting by Glauco Rodrigues, where he appears alongside many of his works, or in another photograph by Vicente de Mello, which portrays him on his orange plantation in Porto Ferreira, in the interior of São Paulo.

Finally, the last section is called Artists, and it seeks to bring the public closer to the collector's creative process, with studies, projects, and sketches by representative names in the collection. One of the highlights here is Edival Ramosa (1940 – 2015), son of an indigenous father and a black mother, who has only recently gained visibility as an exponent of geometric abstractionism in Brazil. He is currently exhibiting at the 36th São Paulo Biennial. In Rio, he is represented by several color studies, which attest to his originality and importance, as well as a multiple panel, commissioned by the collector, and a wooden piece.

The exhibition's title is a quote from Gilberto himself: "I am a sensory being. A Dionysian, let's say. The artwork is so impressive that it motivates a mental and physical excitement as well," he said in a recorded conversation with his son Carlos Alberto Chateaubriand and curator Luiz Camillo Osorio in 2014.

His enthusiasm and excitement for art was indeed constant, so much so that his birthday was religiously celebrated in a simple bar surrounded by artist friends. Despite belonging to important boards, whether of the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA), the Cartier Foundation in Paris, or the São Paulo Biennial, his style was very different from the predatory attitude in the art circuit of a large part of current collectors. So much so that he did not sell works and his collection remains on display at MAM Rio. Current private collecting, with few exceptions, is much more focused on personal interests and is far from perceiving a public function.

Gilberto's connection to the arts, however, is a family affair. His father, media mogul Assis Chateaubriand, known as Chatô, was the most important businessman in the country's communications sector during the 1940s and 1950s, and creator of the São Paulo Museum of Art, MASP, inaugurated in 1948, which houses the most important Impressionist collection in Latin America. However, their opinions on art were divergent. "We had completely different tastes; I always preferred the modernists and received guidance from some of them, like Antônio Bandeira, my great friend, and Carlos Scliar, to start the collection," he told me.

The collection, however, not only includes iconic modernist works, such as those by Vicente do Rego Monteiro, Di Cavalcanti, and the aforementioned Tarsila and Anita, but has also become a reference point for contemporary art. “Gilberto's collection manages to offer a complex panorama of the history of 20th-century Brazilian art, attentive to the movements and artists that comprised it, becoming one of the most important in the country while revealing the fascinating relationships Gilberto had with works and artists,” argues Lafuente, who, in addition to being the exhibition's curator, is the museum's artistic director.

Alongside the exhibition, the centenary is celebrated by the documentary Diplomacy and Art: the life of Gilberto Chateaubriand, produced by the Guimarães Rosa Institute of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which tells the story of the collector through the eyes of many of his friends, including Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira. Directed by Fábio Cappellini, the production can be viewed on the MAM Rio website.


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