By: CHRIS GRAEME
AFTER YEARS of negotiations and legal wrangling over the terms and price, Lisbon finally has been chosen to house one of the best modern art collections in the world – the Berardo Collection.
With nearly 300 pieces of art, spread out over several floors of a purpose-adapted set of galleries at the Belém Cultural Centre, the collection offers an excellent panorama of 20th and early 21st century modern and abstract art.
The collection includes Pablo Picasso (Cubism), Marcel Duchamp (Ready Made), Liubov Popova (Suprematism), Piet Modrian (De Stijl), Andy Warhol (Pop Art), Joan Miró (Surrealism), Salvador Dalí (Surrealism), Donald Judd (Minimalism) and Thomas Ruff (Post Modernism) to name a few.
The Museum was officially opened by the South African billionaire of Madeiran origin, Joe Berardo, accompanied by the Prime Minister José Sócrates, on June 25.
 Pablo Picasso’s ‘Femme Fauteuil’ is part of Berardo’s art collection and can be seen at Lisbon’s new international museum. Photo: CHRIS GRAEME |
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This was followed by a fabulous firework display, inspired by the four elements of nature, before the thousands of members of the public were allowed to pour in free-of-charge for 24 hours.
The Lisbon choice as location for the 300 million dollar collection has brought an end to 10 years of tense negotiation which, at one point, became so heated that the collector threatened to have it located in another country.
The exact terms of the deal have not been divulged but it is known that the Portuguese state has the opportunity of paying an unspecified sum for the collection and having it permanently in Lisbon.
Obstacles
Another rumour has it that the collection is on loan until Berardo’s death, but that the collector will benefit from a payment and a portion of the ticket receipts.
The question of why it took so long for a major European capital city to acquire or build up a collection of modern art is not difficult to answer.
Dictator António Oliveira Salazar, in line with his European contemporaries Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin, considered the modern art movements that punctuated the early and mid 20th century as variously degenerate, Jewish and Bolshevik (in the case of Hitler and Mussolini) or Bourgeoisie, individualistic and capitalist (in the case of Stalin).
Salazar, who paved the way for the fabulous Gulbenkian Collection to be bequeathed to Lisbon in the 1950s, was more interested in natural “blood and soil” folk art themes that extolled the harvest, the peasant, the fertile female figure, the worker and the religious icon rather than avant garde art extolling genuine socialism and democracy.
This meant that those Portuguese artists that really were doing something original and new had to do it in France, London or New York where their work either graced the walls of foreign galleries or ended up in private collections – like that of Joe Berardo.
The man
So what of the man himself? Berardo famously says that he first became interested in art when he bought a fake portrait of the Mona Lisa and was later shocked to not only find out it was one of the world’s most famous paintings but also that his was a copy.
He claims his love for art and collecting is nothing to do with investments but told an interviewer that, “a specialist told me that, if I wanted to form a collection of any value on an international level, I couldn’t have a collection based on my own personal taste.”
There is no doubt that the collection, particularly the Surrealism and Pop Art sections, rival collections you’d see in the Guggenheim Museum in New York or the Tate Modern in London, albeit on a smaller scale.
What is important is that to get an insight into the main modern art movements since the 1920s, it is no longer necessary to fly to Madrid or London. Finally, art is accessible right here in Lisbon in a collection for the country to be proud of.
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