The Financial Times looks at three Brazilian collectors with very different strategies, including focusing on the country’s own rich history of art:
Though today Brazil’s wealthy can afford as much art as European or New York buyers, collectors prefer to treat art as a higher calling rather than an investment, frowning upon speculative buying. They value the history of Brazilian and Latin American art, but also battle import taxes and bureaucracy to add North American and European works to their homes, offices, storage and exhibition spaces. […]
José Olympio Pereira, president and chief executive of Credit Suisse Brazil and his wife Andrea have hundreds of works spread throughout three homes and the Credit Suisse Rio and São Paulo branches. He took an early interest in works from the concrete and neo-concrete movements — both strong in Brazil — before moving on to contemporary masters such as Tunga and Cildo Meireles. The couple were early investors in Beatriz Milhazes’ work, now one of the most expensive artists on the contemporary Brazilian market.
They prefer to collect “in-depth”, he says. “Typically there are the artists that really interest us, and we prefer to have many works by them rather than having one from one artist and another from another.”
More than 90 per cent of the collection is by Brazilian artists. “We think it is important to value the historical baggage we have here . . . We also have privileged access to the works of artists here,” he says.
