“It’s the chance that dictates the acquisition. And you may’t let it cross you by,” says the billionaire real-estate developer and collector Eduardo Costantini of his newest buy. Final week, Costantini, who’s the founding father of Malba (Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires), considered one of South America’s most essential personal museums, grew to become the brand new proprietor of La Grande Dame (The Cat Lady, 1951), an imposing surrealist sculpture by Leonora Carrington, which was offered at Sotheby’s Fashionable Night sale in New York.
With a feline face and human physique, this reverse-sphinx stands at two-meters excessive. It final got here to public sale in 1994, when it offered at Sotheby’s New York for lower than $300,000. For many years it had belonged to the gathering of the notable patron Edward James and was beforehand exhibited at venues such because the Tate Fashionable and the Serpentine Gallery in London, the Metropolitan Museum of Artwork in New York, and the Peggy Guggenheim Assortment in Venice.
Leonora Carrington’s La Grande Dame (The Cat Lady, 1951)
Courtesy of Sotheby’s
Costantini gained the work following a five-minute, five-person bidding warfare, secured the lot for $11.3m (with charges). “The piece was estimated between $5m and $7m. I joined the public sale when it was at $6m, however sadly, it escalated in a short time,” he says. “My restrict was $10m and because the bidding approached that spherical quantity, I observed that the public sale was slowing down. I may sense the opposite bidder was faltering.” The Argentine collector performed his remaining card, providing $9.8m. “It appears the opposite bidder didn’t wish to go for the spherical quantity. And fortunately he stopped there.” Early subsequent yr, La Grande Dame can be exhibited at Malba.
The work was made in collaboration with sculptor José Horna. That very same night, Costantini additionally acquired La marioneta (Caja de música), a singular 1956 piece by Horna, for $80,000.
Carrington has grow to be a coveted determine at auctions, particularly because the Italian curator Cecilia Alemani selected considered one of her works because the inspiration for the central exhibition of the 2022 Venice Biennale, The Milk of Goals.
Costantini has lately grow to be probably the most prolific consumers of Latin American Artwork. In Might this yr, Costantini purchased Las distracciones de Dagoberto (1945), which set a file for a Carrington work, promoting for $28.4m at Sotheby’s New York. This quantity, nonetheless, doesn’t surpass the $34.9m paid by the Argentine at public sale for Diego y yo (1949) by Frida Kahlo, which stays the most costly Latin American paintings to this point. The small portray, a self-portrait of the long-lasting Mexican artist with Diego Rivera’s face painted on her brow like a 3rd eye, remained in a personal Texas assortment till 2021, when it modified fingers. The earlier proprietor had purchased it for $1.4m.
Constantini with Diego y yo (1949) by Frida Kahlo
“It’s true that there’s a powerful deal with Surrealism in the meanwhile, and these acquisitions naturally carry extra visibility to our assortment. However I insist, the significance of the piece is what guides our path, which is an extended one. It is advisable to take it step-by-step.”
Malba—which not too long ago introduced the appointment of the Brazilian curator Rodrigo Moura as its inventive director—was based in 2001 with a set of 220 works. In response to Costantini, that quantity now reaches round 700 works, “plus one other 700 from my private assortment, that is about 1,500 in complete”. As he explains: “I see all of it as one. Mentally, I don’t distinguish between them. I view it as a single unit. The identical collector, the identical purchaser, the identical philosophy.”
Among the many highlights at the moment exhibited on the museum are Abaporu (1928) by Tarsila do Amaral, purchased in 1995 for nearly $1.5m; O impossível (1945) by Maria Martins, bought in 1998 for lower than $100,000; and Kahlo’s Autorretrato con chango y loro (1942), the star of the gathering, which in 1995 price him $3.2m—which set the file worth for the Mexican artist for the following seven years.
Different notable works within the assortment embody two by Remedios Varo, acquired in 2020 and 2021 (for $3.1m and $6.2m, respectively) and Baile en Tehuantepec (1928) by Diego Rivera, for which Costantini paid $15.7m at Phillips in 2016.
The gathering’s significance is, Constantini says, “mirrored within the steady mortgage requests we obtain from worldwide museums”, such because the Museum of Fashionable Artwork in New York (MoMA) or the Pinacoteca de São Paulo. This yr, 5 works—together with Diego y yo—had been featured within the Venice Biennale, curated by Brazilian Adriano Pedrosa, who can be a member of Malba’s inventive committee.
In 2024, Costantini additionally purchased works by Bolivian painter Alejandro Mario Yllanes (1913–1960), one of many first to include indigenous designs into his work, paying $1.9m and $1.1m for 2 of his items. His repertoire additionally expanded with a sculpture by Colombian Rómulo Rozo (1899–1964) for $1.4m and a piece by Mexican painter Nahui Olin (1893–1978), Diego Rivera’s muse, for $317,500. He additionally paid $25,000 every for 2 works by younger Brazilian artist Dalton Paula (1982), whose work is impressed by Afro-Brazilian traditions.
In response to Costantini, these acquisitions replicate meticulous analysis and a method encompassing auctions, galleries, personal collections, and direct collaboration with artists and their heirs. Requested of his ambitions for the gathering he says: “I don’t promote my works. The aim is to have the most effective assortment of Latin American artwork on the earth.”
