The São Paulo Museum of Art ( pt, Museu de Arte de São Paulo, or ') is an

art museum An art museum or art gallery is a building or space for the display of art, usually from the museum's own collection. It might be in public or private ownership and may be accessible to all or have restrictions in place. Although primarily co ...

located on

Paulista Avenue Paulista Avenue (Avenida Paulista in Portuguese, ''Paulista'' being the demonym for those born in the state of São Paulo) is one of the most important avenues in São Paulo, Brazil. It stretches and runs northwest to southeast. Its northwes ...

in the city of

São Paulo São Paulo (, ; Portuguese for ' Saint Paul') is the most populous city in Brazil, and is the capital of the state of São Paulo, the most populous and wealthiest Brazilian state, located in the country's Southeast Region. Listed by the GaW ...

, Brazil. It is well known for its headquarters, a 1968 concrete and glass structure designed by Lina Bo Bardi, whose main body is supported by two lateral beams over a freestanding space. It is considered a landmark of the city and a main symbol of modern Brazilian architecture. The museum is a non-profit institution founded in 1947 by Assis Chateaubriand and

Pietro Maria Bardi Pietro Maria Bardi (La Spezia, February 21, 1900 – São Paulo, October 10, 1999) was an Italian writer, curator and collector, mostly known for being the Founding Director of the São Paulo Museum of Art in Brazil. Bardi started his career i ...

. MASP distinguished itself for many important initiatives concerning

museology Museology or museum studies is the study of museums. It explores the history of museums and their role in society, as well as the activities they engage in, including curating, preservation, public programming, and education. Terminology The w ...

and

art education Visual arts education is the area of learning that is based upon the kind of art that one can see, visual arts The visual arts are art forms such as painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, ceramics, photography, video, filmmaking, de ...

in Brazil, as well as for its pioneering role as a cultural center. It was also the first Brazilian museum interested in

post-World War II The aftermath of World War II was the beginning of a new era started in late 1945 (when World War II ended) for all countries involved, defined by the decline of all colonial empires and simultaneous rise of two superpowers; the Soviet Union (US ...

art. The museum is internationally recognized for its collection of European art, considered the finest in Latin America and all Southern Hemisphere. It also houses an important collection of Brazilian art,

prints In molecular biology, the PRINTS database is a collection of so-called "fingerprints": it provides both a detailed annotation resource for protein families, and a diagnostic tool for newly determined sequences. A fingerprint is a group of conserved ...

and drawings, as well as smaller collections of African and Asian art,

antiquities Antiquities are objects from antiquity, especially the civilizations of the Mediterranean: the Classical antiquity of Greece and Rome, Ancient Egypt and the other Ancient Near Eastern cultures. Artifacts from earlier periods such as the Meso ...

decorative arts ] The decorative arts are arts or crafts whose object is the design and manufacture of objects that are both beautiful and functional. It includes most of the arts making objects for the interiors of buildings, and interior design, but not usua ...

, and others, amounting to more than 8,000 pieces. MASP also has one of the largest art libraries in the country. The entire collection was placed to the Brazilian National Heritage list by Brazil's Institute of History and Art.

History

General context

At the end of the 1940s, the Economy of Brazil, Brazilian economy was going through large structural changes as a result of accelerating industrialization. The city of São Paulo subsequently established itself as the most important industrial hub in the country. Prior to that time, São Paulo's role in modern art had been marked by the Week of Modern Art of 1922. Despite the importance this event had enjoyed in the 1920s, Modernism wouldn't draw much attention of city dwellers and institutions in the following decades. There was only one art museum in São Paulo, the Pinacoteca do Estado, solely devoted to

Academic art Academic art, or academicism or academism, is a style of painting and sculpture produced under the influence of European academies of art. Specifically, academic art is the art and artists influenced by the standards of the French Académie ...

, and a commercial gallery. Assis Chateaubriand, founder and owner of the '' Diários Associados,'' or "Associated Daily Press", the largest media and press conglomerate of Brazil at the time, was one of the most influential individuals of this period. In the late 1940s, Chateaubriand started a campaign to acquire

masterpiece A masterpiece, ''magnum opus'' (), or ''chef-d’œuvre'' (; ; ) in modern use is a creation that has been given much critical praise, especially one that is considered the greatest work of a person's career or a work of outstanding creativity, ...

s to form an art collection of international renown in Brazil. He intended to host the museum in

Rio de Janeiro Rio de Janeiro ( , , ; literally 'River of January'), or simply Rio, is the capital of the state of the same name, Brazil's third-most populous state, and the second-most populous city in Brazil, after São Paulo. Listed by the GaWC as a b ...

, but ultimately chose São Paulo, where he believed it would be easier to gather the necessary funds, since this city was enjoying a very prosperous moment. At the same time, the European art market had been deeply influenced by the end of World War II, making it possible to acquire fine artworks for reasonable prices. With the help of Pietro Maria Bardi, an Italian professor,

critic A critic is a person who communicates an assessment and an opinion of various forms of creative works such as art, literature, music, cinema, theater, fashion, architecture, and food. Critics may also take as their subject social or gover ...

art dealer An art dealer is a person or company that buys and sells works of art, or acts as the intermediary between the buyers and sellers of art. An art dealer in contemporary art typically seeks out various artists to represent, and builds relationshi ...

and former owner of galleries in

Milan Milan ( , , Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 million, while its metropolitan city ...

and Rome, Chateaubriand created a "Museum of Classical and Modern Art". Though he initially planned to lead the project for only a year, Bardi dedicated the rest of his life to it. He moved to Brazil together with his wife, the architect Lina Bo Bardi, and brought along his library and his private art collection.

Beginnings (1947–1957)

The museum was inaugurated and opened to the public on 2 October 1947, displaying the first acquisitions, among them

canvas Canvas is an extremely durable plain-woven fabric used for making sails, tents, marquees, backpacks, shelters, as a support for oil painting and for other items for which sturdiness is required, as well as in such fashion objects as handbag ...

es by

Picasso Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and Scenic design, theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th ce ...

and

Rembrandt Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (, ; 15 July 1606 – 4 October 1669), usually simply known as Rembrandt, was a Dutch Golden Age painter, printmaker and draughtsman. An innovative and prolific master in three media, he is generally cons ...

. In these first years of activity, the museum was located on the upper floors of the Diarios Associados headquarters in the

Centro Centro may refer to: Places Brazil *Centro, Santa Maria, a neighborhood in Santa Maria, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil * Centro, Porto Alegre, a neighborhood of Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil *Centro (Duque de Caxias), a neighborhood of Duq ...

neighborhood of São Paulo. Architect Lina Bo Bardi was in charge of adapting the building to the needs of the museum, dividing it into four distinct areas: an art gallery, a didactic exposition room about the

history of art The history of art focuses on objects made by humans for any number of spiritual, narrative, philosophical, symbolic, conceptual, documentary, decorative, and even functional and other purposes, but with a primary emphasis on its aesthetics, ae ...

, a temporary exhibition room and an auditorium. MASP was the first Brazilian art museum interested in acquiring works of

modern art Modern art includes artistic work produced during the period extending roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s, and denotes the styles and philosophies of the art produced during that era. The term is usually associated with art in which the tradi ...

. The museum quickly became a meeting point for artists, students and intellectuals, attracted not only by its holdings, but also by the workshops and art courses it offered. In the 1950s, the museum created the Institute of Contemporary Art (offering workshops of

engraving Engraving is the practice of incising a design onto a hard, usually flat surface by cutting grooves into it with a burin. The result may be a decorated object in itself, as when silver, gold, steel, or glass are engraved, or may provide an in ...

, drawing, painting, sculpture, dance and

industrial design Industrial design is a process of design applied to physical products that are to be manufactured by mass production. It is the creative act of determining and defining a product's form and features, which takes place in advance of the manufactu ...

), the Publicity School (presently Superior School of Propaganda and Marketing), organizing debates about cinema and literature and creating a youth orchestra and a

ballet company A ballet company is a type of dance troupe which performs classical ballet, neoclassical ballet, and/or contemporary ballet in the European tradition, plus managerial and support staff. Most major ballet companies employ dancers on a year-round ba ...

. The courses were frequently given by important names of the Brazilian artistic scene, such as the painters

Lasar Segall Lasar Segall (July 21, 1889 – August 2, 1957) was a Lithuanian Jewish and Brazilian painter, engraver and sculptor. Segall's work is derived from impressionism, expressionism and modernism. His most significant themes were depictions of hum ...

and

Roberto Sambonet The name Robert is an ancient Germanic given name, from Proto-Germanic "fame" and "bright" (''Hrōþiberhtaz''). Compare Old Dutch ''Robrecht'' and Old High German ''Hrodebert'' (a compound of '' Hruod'' ( non, Hróðr) "fame, glory, honou ...

, the architects Gian Carlo Palanti and Lina Bo Bardi, the sculptor August Zamoyski, and the motion-picture technician

Alberto Cavalcanti Alberto de Almeida Cavalcanti (February 6, 1897 – August 23, 1982) was a Brazilian-born film director and producer. He was often credited under the single name "Cavalcanti". Early life Cavalcanti was born in Rio de Janeiro, the son of ...

. Along with the amplification of the

educational program An educational program is a program written by the institution or ministry of education which determines the learning progress of each subject in all the stages of formal education. See also * Philosophy of education *Curriculum In education ...

, the museum expanded its collection and began to be recognized internationally. Between 1953 and 1957, a selection of 100

s housed in the museum traveled throughout European museums, such as

Musée de l'Orangerie The Musée de l'Orangerie ( en, Orangery Museum) is an art gallery of impressionist and post-impressionist paintings located in the west corner of the Tuileries Garden next to the Place de la Concorde in Paris. The museum is most famous as th ...

(Paris) and the

Tate Gallery Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the U ...

(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 The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

in New York City and in the

Toledo Museum of Art The Toledo Museum of Art is an internationally known art museum located in the Old West End neighborhood of Toledo, Ohio. It houses a collection of more than 30,000 objects. With 45 galleries, it covers 280,000 square feet and is currently in th ...

. The following year, the holdings of MASP were exhibited at other Brazilian venues, such as the Museu Nacional de Belas Artes, in Rio de Janeiro. This established the museum on a global level.

Consolidation of the museum

The collection's rising growth and importance 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 Belvedere (from Italian, meaning "beautiful sight") may refer to: Places Australia *Belvedere, Queensland, a locality in the Cassowary Coast Region Africa * Belvedere (Casablanca), a neighborhood in Casablanca, Morocco * Belvedere, Harare, Z ...

Trianon – a traditional meeting point of the Paulistano wealthy, which had been demolished in 1951 – to host the first edition of

São Paulo Art Biennial The São Paulo Art Biennial ( Portuguese: ''Bienal de São Paulo'') was founded in 1951 and has been held every two years since. It is the second oldest art biennial in the world after the Venice Biennale (in existence since 1895), which serves as ...

. The ground on

had been donated to the

City Hall In local government, a city hall, town hall, civic centre (in the UK or Australia), guildhall, or a municipal building (in the Philippines), is the chief administrative building of a city, town, or other municipality. It usually houses ...

with the condition that the view to the downtown area and the valley of the Nove de Julho Avenue be preserved. The new MASP building was the brainchild of Lina Bo Bardi. To preserve the required view of the downtown area, Bardi idealized a building suspended above ground, supported by four massive rectangular columns made of concrete. The construction is considered to be unique worldwide for its peculiarity: the main body of the building stands on four lateral supporting pillars, generating a free area of 74 meters underneath the sustained building. Constructed between 1956 and 1968, the new site of the museum was inaugurated on 7 November by

Queen Elizabeth II Elizabeth II (Elizabeth Alexandra Mary; 21 April 1926 – 8 September 2022) was Queen of the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth realms from 6 February 1952 until her death in 2022. She was queen regnant of 32 sovereign states during ...

of the United Kingdom during her visit to Brazil. Assis Chateaubriand would not get to see the inauguration of the new building. He died months before, a victim of

thrombosis Thrombosis (from Ancient Greek "clotting") is the formation of a blood clot inside a blood vessel, obstructing the flow of blood through the circulatory system. When a blood vessel (a vein or an artery) is injured, the body uses platelets (th ...

. The media empire which he developed had also been facing difficulties since the beginning of the 1960s. Growing debts and the competition in the media market by

Roberto Marinho Roberto Pisani Marinho (December 3, 1904 – August 6, 2003) was a Brazilian businessman who was the owner of media conglomerate Grupo Globo from 1925 to 2003, and during this period expanded the company from newspapers to radio and television. ...

's press conglomerate – caused the scarcity of the funds which had permitted the gathering of the collection. The overthrow of Diários Associados and the death of its founder made the government intervene and pay for some of the debts contracted with foreign institutions. During the government of president

Juscelino Kubitschek Juscelino Kubitschek de Oliveira (; 12 September 1902 – 22 August 1976), also known by his initials JK, was a prominent Brazilian politician who served as the 21st president of Brazil from 1956 to 1961. His term was marked by economic prosp ...

Caixa Econômica Federal Caixa Econômica Federal (, ''Federal Savings Bank''), also referred to as Caixa, is a state-owned Brazilian financial services company headquartered in Brasília, Brazil. It is the fourth largest banking institution in Brazil, as well as th ...

granted a loan to honor the financial obligations of the institution and secured the loan with its art collections. Years later, in the 1970s, the museum's debt with the Brazilian government was negotiated and paid off. In 1969, in response to a request by the museum, the Brazilian Institute for Historic and Artistic Heritage (IPHAN) registered MASP's holdings as part of the national

heritage Heritage may refer to: History and society * A heritage asset is a preexisting thing of value today ** Cultural heritage is created by humans ** Natural heritage is not * Heritage language Biology * Heredity, biological inheritance of physical c ...

. In the 1970s the museum gained fame in the

Eastern Hemisphere The Eastern Hemisphere is the half of the planet Earth which is east of the prime meridian (which crosses Greenwich, London, United Kingdom) and west of the antimeridian (which crosses the Pacific Ocean and relatively little land from pole ...

by organizing many exhibitions using selected works of its collection at Japanese museums. In 1973, the collection was presented at the Ministry of Foreign Relations in

Brasília Brasília (; ) is the federal capital of Brazil and seat of government of the Federal District. The city is located at the top of the Brazilian highlands in the country's Central-West region. It was founded by President Juscelino Kubitsche ...

. 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 Santiago (, ; ), also known as Santiago de Chile, is the capital and largest city of Chile as well as one of the largest cities in the Americas. It is the center of Chile's most densely populated region, the Santiago Metropolitan Region, whose ...

, and in the Biblioteca Luís Angel Aragón, in

Bogotá Bogotá (, also , , ), officially Bogotá, Distrito Capital, abbreviated Bogotá, D.C., and formerly known as Santa Fe de Bogotá (; ) during the Spanish period and between 1991 and 2000, is the capital city of Colombia, and one of the larges ...

. In 2021, plans to construct a 14-story extension with an underground link to its current building were announced, to be completed by 2024.

The building

Construction on the present building of the museum began in 1957, and the building was inaugurated in 1968. MASP is famous for its remarkable

brutalist Brutalist architecture is an architectural style that emerged during the 1950s in the United Kingdom, among the reconstruction projects of the post-war era. Brutalist buildings are characterised by Minimalism (art), minimalist constructions th ...

structure, and it is considered one of the landmarks of the Brazilian

modern architecture Modern architecture, or modernist architecture, was an architectural movement or architectural style based upon new and innovative technologies of construction, particularly the use of glass, steel, and reinforced concrete; the idea that for ...

. The building is located on the former site of

Trianon on

, from which it was possible to see the Centro of São Paulo and the Cantareira Mountains beyond. José Borges de Figueiredo, the investor who sold the plot of ground to the City Hall, wrote a non-binding letter to the administration, asking that it be preserved as a "public place in perpetuity". While in the following years multiple proposed projects ignored his wish, the architect Lina Bo Bardi and engineer José Carlos Figueiredo Ferraz ultimately conceived an underground block as well as a suspended structure. The structure stands eight meters above the ground, supported by four pillars connected by two huge concrete beams. A free space of between the pillars was the largest free span in the world at that time. The building inaugurated the so-called protected

reinforced concrete Reinforced concrete (RC), also called reinforced cement concrete (RCC) and ferroconcrete, is a composite material in which concrete's relatively low ultimate tensile strength, tensile strength and ductility are compensated for by the inclusion ...

technique in Brazil. In the construction, totalling approximately , there are – besides the permanent and temporary exhibition galleries – a library, photo gallery, film gallery, video gallery, two auditoriums, a restaurant, a store, workshop rooms, administrative offices and a technical area. The building's installations and finishing are homely, as Lina Bo herself described: "Concrete visible, whitewash, a 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.CEDAC
São Paulo 450 anos
Retrieved 2007-6-26. ��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 A crystal or crystalline solid is a solid material whose constituents (such as atoms, molecules, or ions) are arranged in a highly ordered microscopic structure, forming a crystal lattice that extends in all directions. In addition, macro ...

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, but it also has roots in interwar Italian exhibition design. In the reverse of these supports, which are not used anymore, there were labels with information about the painter and the work. Paradoxically, the museum abandoned this model of exhibition at the end of the 1990s, when the method was beginning to be noticed and implemented by foreign institutions and artists. Between 1996 and 2001, the current administration of the museum undertook a vast and controversial reform. Despite the indispensable restoration of the general structure, dramatic changes implemented by the architect and former director of the institution Julio Neves included 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. Some architects allege that the reform caused a profound distortion of Lina's original project.

The collection

The formation of the collection

The main body of the collection was assembled between 1947 and 1960.

, formerly owner of commercial galleries in

and Rome, was in charge of searching and selecting the works which should be acquired, while Chateaubriand looked for donors and patrons, trying to tempt potential ones with banquets and lavish ceremonies. These methods drew lots of criticism, as was 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, just after WWII, one of the major buyers of art in the international market. Unlike other institutions, whose acquisitions depended on approval of a curators council, the São Paulo Museum of Art usually acquired its pieces quickly, sometimes by

telegram Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas ...

. The works of art were generally acquired at

Christie's Christie's is a British auction house founded in 1766 by James Christie. Its main premises are on King Street, St James's in London, at Rockefeller Center in New York City and at Alexandra House in Hong Kong. It is owned by Groupe Artémi ...

, Marlborough,

Sotheby's Sotheby's () is a British-founded American multinational corporation with headquarters in New York City. It is one of the world's largest brokers of fine and decorative art, jewellery, and collectibles. It has 80 locations in 40 countries, an ...

, Knoedler, Seligman and Wildenstein. At the end of the 1960s, Chateaubriand's press

conglomerate Conglomerate or conglomeration may refer to: * Conglomerate (company) * Conglomerate (geology) * Conglomerate (mathematics) In popular culture: * The Conglomerate (American group), a production crew and musical group founded by Busta Rhymes ** ...

was facing troubles, with growing debts and competition from

's media companies. The financial difficulties of Diários Associados caused the decline of the museum's financial resources. Consequently, the museum then added to its collection through spontaneous donations of artists, companies and private collectors.

Overview of the collection

The São Paulo Museum of Art collection is considered the largest and more comprehensive collection of Western art in Latin America. Among the 8,000 works of the museum, the collection of European paintings, sculptures, drawings, engravings, and

stands out. Early modern French art, French and Italian schools of painting are broadly represented, forming the main body of the collection, followed by Spanish, Portuguese,

Flemish Flemish (''Vlaams'') is a Low Franconian dialect cluster of the Dutch language. It is sometimes referred to as Flemish Dutch (), Belgian Dutch ( ), or Southern Dutch (). Flemish is native to Flanders, a historical region in northern Belgium; ...

, Dutch,

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ...

and

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...

masters. The museum also keeps a significant collection of Brazilian art and ''Brasiliana'', which shows the development of Brazilian art from 17th century to the present. The museum also possesses important holdings of Latin American art and North American art. On a smaller scale, the museum's holdings include representative objects of many periods and distinct non-Western

civilization A civilization (or civilisation) is any complex society characterized by the development of a state, social stratification, urbanization, and symbolic systems of communication beyond natural spoken language (namely, a writing system). ...

s – such as African and Asian arts – and others which stand out for their technological, archaeological, historic, and artistic relevance, like the select collections of Egyptian, Etruscan,

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

and

Roman Roman or Romans most often refers to: * Rome, the capital city of Italy * Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *''Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lett ...

antiquities, besides other artifacts of

Pre-Columbian In the history of the Americas, the pre-Columbian era spans from the original settlement of North and South America in the Upper Paleolithic period through European colonization, which began with Christopher Columbus's voyage of 1492. Usually, ...

cultures and medieval European art.

Paintings

''Italian school'' :* Tiziano Vecelli (known as Titian) – 1 painting :*

Tintoretto Tintoretto ( , , ; born Jacopo Robusti; late September or early October 1518Bernari and de Vecchi 1970, p. 83.31 May 1594) was an Italian painter identified with the Venetian school. His contemporaries both admired and criticized the speed wit ...

, Jacopo Comin – 2 paintings :*

Giambattista Pittoni Giambattista Pittoni or Giovanni Battista Pittoni (6 June 1687 – 6 November 1767) was a Venetian painter of the late Baroque or Rococo period. He was among the founders of the Academy of Fine Arts of Venice, of which in 1758 he became the ...

– 1 painting, ''Dioniso e Ariadne'' :* Sanzio, Raffaello – 1 Painting, '' Resurrection of Christ'' :* Botticelli, Sandro – 1 painting, '' Virgin and Child with the Infant St. John the Baptist'' :* Mantegna, Andrea – 1 painting :* Perugino, Pietro −1 painting :* Allori, Alessandro – 1 painting :* d'Antonio, Biagio – 1 painting :* Bassano, Jacopo (Jacopo dal Ponte) – 1 painting :* Bellini, Giovanni – 1 painting, '' Madonna Willys'' :* Bordone, Paris – 1 painting :* Guercino – 1 painting :* di Cosimo, Piero – 1 painting :* Francia, Francesco (Francesco Raibolini) – 1 painting :* Giampietrino (Gian Pietro Rizzi) – 1 painting :* Nelli, Ottaviano – 1 painting :* Reni, Guido – 1 painting :* Saraceni, Carlo – 1 painting :* del Sellaio, Jacopo – 1 painting ''Brazil and the Americas'' :* de Almeida Júnior, José Ferraz – 6 paintings :* do Amaral, Tarsila – 2 paintings :* Américo de Figueiredo e Mello, Pedro – 2 paintings :* Calixto de Jesus, Benedito – 3 paintings :* Di Cavalcanti, Emiliano – 2 paintings :* Malfatti, Anita – 2 paintings :* Meirelles de Lima, Victor – 4 paintings :* Portinari, Candido – 17 paintings :* do Rêgo Monteiro, Vicente – 2 paintings :* Rivera, Diego – 2 paintings :* Segall, Lasar – 2 paintings :* Stuart, Gilbert – 1 painting :* Volpi, Alfredo – 1 painting :* Visconti, Eliseu – 2 paintings ''French school'' Renoir Mlles Cahen d Anvers

:* Bonnard, Pierre – 1 painting :* Cézanne, Paul – 5 paintings :* Chardin, Jean-Baptiste-Siméon – 1 painting :* Clouet, François – 1 painting :* Corot, Jean-Baptiste-Camille – 5 paintings :* Courbet, Gustave – 2 paintings :* Debret, Jean-Baptiste – 1 painting :* Degas (Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas) – 3 paintings :* Delacroix, Eugène – 4 paintings :* Drouais, François-Hubert – 1 painting :* Fragonard, Jean-Honoré – 2 paintings :* Gauguin, Paul – 2 paintings :* Gobert, Pierre – 1 painting :* Ingres, Jean-Auguste-Dominique – 3 paintings :* Lemoyne, François – 1 painting :* Léger, Fernand – 1 painting :* Manet, Édouard – 4 paintings :* Matisse, Henry – 2 paintings :* Mignard, Pierre (and workshop) – 1 painting :* Modigliani, Amedeo – 5 paintings :* Monet, Claude – 2 paintings, including '' Boating on the River Epte'' :* Nattier, Jean-Marc – 4 paintings :* Pater, Jean-Baptiste – 1 painting :* Picasso, Pablo Ruiz – 3 paintings, including '' Portrait of Suzanne Bloch'' :* Poussin, Nicolas – 1 painting :* Renoir, Pierre-Auguste – 12 paintings, including '' Pink and Blue'' :* de Toulouse-Lautrec, Henri – 10 paintings :* Vestier, Antoine – 1 painting :* Vuillard, Édouard – 3 paintings ''Spanish school'' :*

El Greco Domḗnikos Theotokópoulos ( el, Δομήνικος Θεοτοκόπουλος ; 1 October 1541 7 April 1614), most widely known as El Greco ("The Greek"), was a Greek painter, sculptor and architect of the Spanish Renaissance. "El ...

(Domenikos Theotokopoulos) – 2 paintings :* Goya y Lucientes, Francisco – 4 paintings :* Murillo, Bartolomé Esteban – 1 painting :* Velázquez, Diego Rodríguez de Silva y – 1 painting, the '' Portrait of the Count-Duke of Olivares'' :* Zurbarán, Francisco de – 2 paintings ''Dutch, Flemish and German schools'' :* Bosch, Hieronymus – 1 painting :* Cranach, Lucas (the Elder) – 1 painting :* Dornicke, Jan van – 1 painting :* Dyck, Anthony van – 2 paintings :* Hals, Frans – 3 paintings :* Holbein, Hans (the Younger) – 1 painting :* Massys, Quentin – 1 painting, '' Ill-Matched Marriage'' :* Memling, Hans – 1 painting :* Oolen, Jan van – 1 painting :* Post, Frans – 5 paintings :*

– 1 painting, ''

Portrait of a Young Man with a Golden Chain ''Portrait of a Young Man with a Gold Chain'' is an oil painting usually attributed to the Dutch painter Rembrandt. Signed and dated 1635, it was traditionally regarded as a self-portrait (under the title ''Self-Portrait with Beard Rising'' or ''S ...

'' :* Rubens, Peter Paul(and workshop) – 1 painting :* Ruysdael, Salomon van – 1 painting :* Van Gogh, Vincent – 5 paintings ''English school'' :* Constable, John – 1 painting :* Gainsborough, Thomas – 3 paintings :* Hogarth, William – 1 painting :* Lawrence, Thomas (and workshop) – 2 paintings :* Raeburn, Henry – 1 painting :* Reynolds, Joshua – 1 painting :* Romney, George – 1 painting :* Turner, J. M. W. – 1 painting The museum also has some small collections of photographs, costumes and textiles, kitsch objects, etc.

Theft

On 20 December 2007, around 5:09 am, three men invaded MASP and took two paintings, considered to be among the most valuable of the museum: ''O Lavrador de Café'' (''The Coffee Farmer''), by Cândido Portinari, and the '' Portrait of Suzanne Bloch'' by

Pablo Picasso Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and Scenic design, theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th ce ...

. The whole action took about three minutes. Art experts estimated value of the paintings at about 55 or 56 million dollars. The paintings were recovered by the Brazilian police on 8 January 2008, in the city of

Ferraz de Vasconcelos Ferraz de Vasconcelos is a municipality in the state of São Paulo in Brazil. It is part of the Metropolitan Region of São Paulo. The population is 196,500 (2020 est.) in an area of 29.56 km². History and the City Ferraz de Vasconcelos ...

, in Greater São Paulo.

Gallery

References

External links

Official websiteVirtual tour of the São Paulo Museum of Art
provided by

Google Arts & Culture Google Arts & Culture (formerly Google Art Project) is an online platform of high-resolution images and videos of artworks and cultural artifacts from partner cultural organizations throughout the world. It utilizes high-resolution image technol ...

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Sao Paulo Art Museum Art museums established in 1947 1947 establishments in Brazil