São Paulo Art Museum

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Museu de Arte de São Paulo, or MASP, was inaugurated in 1962, by Assis Chateaubriand and Pietro Maria Bardi.

MASP is the most important museum of Brazil, having an extensive collection of paintings, but also of sculptures gathered since the end of the World War. Located in São Paulo, Brazil, it was created by Pietro Maria Bardi (an Italian journalist) and his wife, Lina Bo Bardi (an architect, who studied in Rome)., and financed by donations from wealthy Brazilian people mainly from the state of São Paulo. This financing was quite colourful, sometimes amounting to sheer extortion by Brazil's most famous press magnate, Assis 'Chatô' Chateaubriand, also nicknamed 'The King of Brazil'.

The building of the museum was designed by Lina Bo Bardi, in a very particular way: the main body of the building stands on four lateral supporting pillars, generating a free space of 74 meters. This new building was inaugurated on November 07, 1968, with the presence of Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom.

The collection encompasses more than 7,000 works of art, from Ancient Times to the 21st Century. European paintings and sculptures are the highlight of the Museum: some of the greatest names of the history of the art are represented here, such as Raphael, Botticelli, Titian, Tintoretto, Perugino (Italian School); Clouet, Poussin, Nattier, Delacroix, Courbet, Manet, Monet, Renoir, Degas, Cézanne (French School); Memling, Cranach, Rubens, Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Van Dornicke (Flemish/Dutch/Netherlandish Schools); Reynolds, Constable, Gainsborough, Turner (English School). Andy Warhol, Picasso, Lerger, Modigliani, Matisse, Chagall and many other great names of the arts in the 20th century are also represented.