Olivia Guedes Penteado

Olivia Guedes Penteado was an art collector and patron who assembled one of the first collections in Brazil to include works of both Brazilian and European modernism. Throughout the 1920s and early 1930s, Penteado provided artists with crucial patronage and financial support and fostered the emergence of a São Paulo-centered modernist movement by hosting an avant-garde salon in her home, and later, through her role in organizations such as the Sociedade Pró-Arte Moderna (Pro-Modern Art Society [SPAM]).

Penteado was born into São Paulo’s rural aristocracy, the daughter of the Baron and Baroness of Piraptingui, José Guedes de Souza and Carolina Leopoldina de Almeida Lima. She spent her childhood on her family’s coffee plantation in Mogi-Mirim, receiving a Francophone education from private tutors—typical for upper-class children during this period. In 1888, at the age of sixteen, she married her cousin Ignacio Penteado and relocated to Santos, a port city, where he ran a coffee exporting company. After the birth of their two daughters, in 1894 the family moved to São Paulo, settling into the newly built mansion on Conselheiro Nébias Street that would later house Penteado’s collection. In 1902, seeking medical treatment for her ailing husband, Penteado established a second home in Paris. Although Penteado returned to São Paulo in 1914, following her husband’s death and the outbreak of the First World War, she maintained her Paris home until 1922 and made frequent trips between the two cities.

In February 1922 artists and intellectuals in São Paulo organized the first multi-disciplinary exhibition of modern art in Brazil, the Semana de Arte Moderna (Week of Modern Art), which has been compared productively to the 1913 Armory Show in the United States for its impact on the course of modern art. Soon after, breaking with the expectations of her gender and class, Penteado began hosting gatherings in her home, which quickly became a meeting point for São Paulo’s artists, intellectuals, and high society, some of whom, such as painter Tarsila do Amaral and writer Oswald de Andrade, became close friends and allies in their commitment to the development of a Brazilian modernist movement.

In 1923, Penteado travelled to Paris, and began building her modern art collection in consultation with Tarsila. They visited the studios of some of the best-known avant-garde artists working in Paris, including Constantin Brancusi and Fernand Léger, and made frequent visits to Léonce Rosenberg’s Galerie L’Effort Moderne. Through Tarsila, Penteado acquired from Rosenberg the centerpiece of her collection: Léger’s Compotier de poires (The Pear Dish; 1923; Museu de Arte de São Paulo), one of the first French Cubist works to travel to Brazil, celebrated with a festive procession upon its arrival to Penteado’s home. She also acquired Brancusi’s La Négresse blonde II (Blond Negress II, 1933; The Museum of Modern Art, New York); a drawing by Marie Laurencin; two untitled paintings by André Lhote; and Pablo Picasso’s Le Polichinelle lisant “Le populaire” (Puppets Read “Le Populaire,” 1920; Jones Bergamin Collection, Rio de Janeiro); and Tsuguharu Foujita’s Le chat (The Cat, 1930; Familia Olivia Penteado Collection, São Paulo) and Jeune fille couchée (Young Girl Sleeping, 1931; private collection, São Paulo). After returning to São Paulo, Penteado added modern Brazilian works to her collection, including Tarsila’s A caipirinha (Country Girl, 1923; Salim Taufic Schahin Collection); several sculptures by Victor Brecheret; and O beijo (n.d., Familia Olivia Penteado Collection) by the Lithuanian-Brazilian painter Lasar Segall.

Penteado continued to host gatherings at her home, in which she housed her newly purchased collection. In 1925, deeming her Neoclassical-style mansion designed by Ramos de Azevedo to be out of tune with her collection, Penteado commissioned Segall to convert the interior of a carriage house on her property into an exhibition and salon space. When completed, the Pavilhão Modernista (modernist pavilion), as it was known, boasted colorful walls richly decorated with Segall’s abstract murals, and works of Brazilian and European modernism installed side-by-side.

At a moment when Brazilian collectors were primarily interested in acquiring academic work, Penteado provided necessary support to emerging artists. Her salon became an important site for the dissemination of modernism and a place of contact between the French and Brazilian avant-gardes, both through the objects in Penteado’s collection and events, in which French artists visiting Brazil were often present. Penteado also shared her collection with broader audiences and lent works to several public exhibitions between 1929 and 1933. In 1932, she became a founding member of SPAM, an organization broadly committed to promoting the advancement of modern art in Brazil. Between 1932 and 1935, SPAM hosted two major exhibitions of international and Brazilian modern art as well as conferences, concerts, performances, and parties—often in richly decorated spaces created by commissioned modern artists.

Penteado passed away from appendicitis in 1934, leaving her collection to her family, who later sold or donated several works to major museums such as the Museu de Arte de São Paulo and to private collections. In the 1940s the Penteado mansion and modernist pavilion were demolished during a public works initiative to broaden and modernize São Paulo’s avenues. A 2002 exhibition at the Museu de Arte Brasileira da Fundação Armando Alvares Penteado reunited her collection in a replica of the pavilion, providing critical documentation of the significant contributions of Penteado to the development of modernism in Brazil.