{"id":3559,"date":"2015-03-04T14:51:49","date_gmt":"2015-03-04T14:51:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/raulmourao.com\/blog\/?p=3559"},"modified":"2015-03-04T14:51:49","modified_gmt":"2015-03-04T14:51:49","slug":"boom-time-for-brazils-art-market-by-barbara-pollack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.archive.raulmourao.com\/blog\/?p=3559","title":{"rendered":"Boom Time for Brazil\u2019s Art Market\u00a0By Barbara Pollack"},"content":{"rendered":"

A version of this story originally appeared in the March 2015 issue of ARTnews<\/em> on page 54 under the title \u201cBoom Time for Brazil.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Who needs soccer when you\u2019ve got fairs, galleries, and a flood of international collectors animating the country\u2019s art scene?<\/em><\/h3>\n
\"The<\/p>\n
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The Biennial Pavilion in S\u00e3o Paulo, site of the upcoming 2015 SP-Arte fair.<\/p>\n

PANGEIA DE DOIS<\/small><\/div>\n

Millions of soccer fans flooded Brazil in 2014 for the World Cup, but for the art world, the big story is that international collectors and artists are making their presence felt in this country\u2019s once-isolated contemporary-art scene. With the success of the S\u00e3o Paulo Biennial and ArtRio fair in September, soon to be bolstered by the more profitable SP-Arte fair opening in S\u00e3o Paulo this month, collectors from around the globe are finding reasons to go to Brazil.<\/p>\n

A recent study<\/a> conducted by Latitudes, an organization for the promotion of Brazilian galleries abroad, and ArtTactic, a market-research firm, found that 74 percent of international collectors surveyed either own or say they intend to buy the work of a Brazilian artist. American collectors needn\u2019t have traveled far to encounter Brazilian art in 2014\u2014there were major U.S. retrospectives of Lygia Clark<\/a> at the Museum of Modern Art<\/a>, Adriana Varej\u00e3o at the ICA Boston<\/a>, Sebasti\u00e3o Salgado at theInternational Center for Photography<\/a>, and Beatriz Milhazes at P\u00e9rez Art Museum Miami<\/a>. Many U.S. galleries now represent at least one Brazilian artist, and Brazilian galleries are bringing works to the United States, especially to Art Basel Miami Beach, where 2014 saw some 17 Brazilian galleries in attendance, including pioneer Luisa Strina<\/a> and powerhouse Mendes Wood DM<\/a>.
\n\u201cIn the last five years, I have seen the most exponential growth in the Brazilian market,\u201d said Sotheby\u2019s Latin American\u2013art specialist Axel Stein, who attributes this to the increased recognition of the historic impact of Brazilian artists on international contemporary art, going back to the Neo-Concretists of the 1960s, with artists such as Clark, H\u00e9lio Oiticica, Mira Schendel, and Lygia Pape. According to Stein, there is also strong interest in the Brazilian modernist C\u00e2ndido Portinari. More recently, works by contemporary artists such as Milhazes, whose Meu Lim\u00e3o<\/a><\/em> (2000) sold at Sotheby\u2019s New York in November 2012 for $2.1 million, and Varej\u00e3o, whose Parede com Incis\u00f5es a la Fontana II<\/a><\/em> (Wall with Incisions a la Fontana II), 2001, brought $1.8 million at Christie\u2019s New York in 2011, have gleaned high prices.<\/p>\n

\"Installation<\/p>\n
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Installation view of \u201cLygia Clark: The Abandonment of Art, 1948\u20131988\u201d at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (May 10\u2013August 24, 2014).
\nTHOMAS GRIESEL\/\u00a92014 THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART<\/small><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cFrom my perspective, this is a market that is completely undervalued,\u201d Stein asserted, adding that while Brazilian buyers still make up 70 percent of sales of Brazilian art, international collectors are catching on, especially as they learn about the influence of Brazilian art on many movements in the United States and Europe. \u201cThis is why prices are going up, and the market is growing exponentially.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you compare Brazilian artists\u2019 prices to prices of U.S. or European artists, they are considerably less expensive,\u201d said New York art adviser and curator Simon Watson, who now spends half his time in S\u00e3o Paulo. \u201cThat means that a New York gallery could be working with a very solid mid-career Brazilian artist at only a fraction above a U.S. emerging artist, which means collectors can get involved without getting clubbed because they did not start 15 years ago.\u201d
\nYou can sense the enthusiasm when visiting galleries in the Jardim and Vila Madalena neighborhoods of S\u00e3o Paulo. This is still a young scene, as is underscored by the Latitudes report, which found that more than 50 percent of the country\u2019s galleries (most of which are in S\u00e3o Paulo) were founded after 2000, with half of those opening for business after 2011. Once exclusively a domestic market, most galleries are now taking on international artists to appeal to young Brazilian collectors and are finding that foreign collectors regularly attend their shows year-round, not just when the Biennial opens.
\nGallerist Luisa Strina, who has been in business since 1974, has seen enormous developments in the last ten years. \u201cIt has changed totally. It has become international. I sell mostly to foreign collectors outside Brazil. Now every gallery in Europe and the United States has to have a Brazilian artist,\u201d she said, noting that, when she first showed at Art Basel in 1990, business was almost nonexistent. At the same time, according to Strina, Brazilian collectors have become much more open to international contemporary art, owing to the success of the S\u00e3o Paulo Biennial. Founded in 1952, it is one of the oldest biennial expositions in the world, second only to Venice, but it became truly international in 1998 with Paulo Herkenhoff as its curator. ArtRio opened the door further in 2010, attracting David Zwirner, Gagosian, and Pace galleries. SP-Arte, the more established fair, founded in 2005, followed suit, recently adding Marian Goodman, Zwirner, Michael Werner, and Stephen Friedman galleries. And White Cube opened a branch in S\u00e3o Paulo in 2012 and will exhibit German artist Anselm Kiefer in April during the fair.
\nThe upcoming SP-Arte (April 9 through April 12) will be the biggest yet, with 142 galleries and special site-specific projects filling the 27,000 square meters of the Biennial Pavilion, designed by the legendary Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer. When it started ten years ago, there were only 49 galleries, all Latin American, attracting only 6,000 visitors. Now, many Brazilian galleries report that the fair is their main source of sales for the year.
\n\u201cWhen I began, foreign dealers would say, \u2018I\u2019m not coming because I don\u2019t believe Brazilians buy international art,\u2019 and they were right back then,\u201d said SP-Arte founder and director Fernanda Feitosa. \u201cBut now, with the big growth of the economy, people are traveling more and going to every international art fair, so you see Brazilians starting collections at a younger age and looking at international art.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Matthew<\/p>\n
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Matthew Barney, De Lama L\u00e2mina<\/em>, 2004\u20132009, installed at Instituto Inhotim.
\nPEDRO MOTTA<\/small><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

A controversial factor that limits sales of foreign art in Brazil is that of the value-added taxes, which add up to 40 to 50 percent on art imports after federal, state, and municipal taxes are included. ArtRio was the first fair to obtain a dispensation on local VAT and was soon followed by SP-Arte, bringing the total down to 21 percent. This is still a steep price for foreign galleries to pay when bringing international art to Brazil.<\/p>\n

Still, the foreign galleries have drawn many more international collectors, who have only gained confidence in the Brazilian art market by exposure to the scene. \u201cOf course, coming to Brazil you have a different feeling about our artists because you see them in context\u2014in museums and in collectors\u2019 homes,\u201d said Feitosa, noting that this year visitors will be invited to view the collections of Credit Suisse investment-banking head Jos\u00e9 Olympio da Veiga Pereira and his wife Andrea, New York\u2019s Museum of Modern Art supporter Cleusa Garfinkel, and S\u00e3o Paulo experimental art space PIV\u00d4 board members Camilla and Eduardo Barella, among others. Feitosa, whose husband is the former president of the S\u00e3o Paulo Biennial Foundation and current president of MASP, the S\u00e3o Paulo Museum of Art, will also open their home.
\nOne collector who has made a trip to Brazil an essential stop on the art itinerary is mining magnate Bernardo de Mello Paz, whose Instituto Inhotim spreads over 5,000 acres, dwarfing any other notion of a sculpture park. Combining a nature conservancy with 24 pavilions devoted to individual contemporary artists, Instituto Inhotim takes more than a day to see.
\n\u201cBernardo Paz is a rich man, though maybe not by the standards of major art collecting today, but he had the desire and willingness to pour everything he had into this vision,\u201d said Allan Schwartzman, the lead curator of the project. \u201cWhat we\u2019ve done here would not have been possible in the United States,\u201d he said, pointing out that a combination of factors\u2014inexpensive land, low construction costs, low fabrication costs\u2014make the operation of Inhotim possible. More importantly, the park provides plenty of space for works that could not be accommodated in almost any urban center in the United States. Matthew Barney\u2019s pavilion, for example, is a geodesic dome, set in a eucalyptus forest, that houses a replica of an uprooted tree in the grip of a tractor. The installation, his contribution to a Carnival parade, was created as a commentary on deforestation. Inhotim\u2019s latest commission is a pavilion for artist R. H. Quaytman, the plans for which (including the artist\u2019s paintings) were exhibited at Barbara Gladstone Gallery in New York in December.<\/p>\n

\"View<\/p>\n
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View of Instituto Inhotim.
\nROSSANA MAGRI<\/small><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cThere is a wonderful and rich history of collecting in Brazil, a country where there are probably more contemporary artists than in most European capitals,\u201d said Schwartzman, adding, \u201cIt is a very sophisticated, well-informed core of collectors, who at the same time have their own unique way of approaching acquisitions.\u201d<\/p>\n

For foreign collectors trying to get a grasp on this rapidly growing art scene, a good place to start is Galeria Fortes Vila\u00e7a<\/a>, which represents Varej\u00e3o, Milhazes, Ernesto Neto, Iran do Esp\u00edrito Santo, Jac Leirner, and Rivane Neuenschwander, among many other leading contemporary artists. \u201cBrazilian artists have broken out of the Latin American label and are in dialogue with international contemporary art,\u201d said gallery partner Alexandre Gabriel. \u201cI don\u2019t feel like I am working in the center. We still feel we are on the periphery. But more and more, we are becoming part of an international itinerary.\u201d Mendes Wood DM, founded in 2010 by the partners Pedro Mendes, Matthew Wood, and Felipe Dmab, is the place to find a practical collision between international and Brazilian artists. Combining four adjoining buildings, a recent exhibition brought together Brazilian sculptor Tunga with an installation by Lawrence Weiner. In their warehouse annex space in an industrial pocket of S\u00e3o Paulo, Mendes Wood DM exhibited the works of young Brazilian artist Paulo Nazareth, inspired by his endurance walks through Africa and Latin America.
\nVideo artist Thiago Rocha Pitta is a direct beneficiary of the internationalization of the Brazilian art scene, exhibiting through March 22 at Boesky East<\/a> on New York\u2019s Lower East Side, following a successful showing at Galeria Millan in S\u00e3o Paulo. Unlike earlier generations of Brazilian artists who focused on abstraction or Brazilian exoticism, Rocha Pitta pursues more universal sites, filming landscapes devoid of people. For his work at Boesky, he recorded the sound and sights of a desert in Argentina.
\nPerhaps the most international of Brazil\u2019s art stars is Vik Muniz, who, despite his success in the United States, spends two-thirds of his time in Rio de Janeiro. Often engaged in projects that interact with and benefit those living in the city\u2019s poorest neighborhoods, the favelas, he is currently involved in building Escola do Vidigal, a school of technology for young children in the neighborhood of Vidigal. \u201cI have a beautiful house in Rio, but I spend most of my days in Vidigal,\u201d he said in an interview by phone. \u201cPeople have stigmatized the favela for too long, and I think we have an opportunity here to reverse that.\u201d
\nMuniz, who grew up in a S\u00e3o Paulo slum before moving to the United States in 1983 (with money he received as payment for being the victim of an accidental shooting), has his own perspective on changes in the Brazilian art scene. \u201cI am very influenced by the American and European art of my time, but I am a Brazilian person, which gives me a special way of looking at the world,\u201d he said, noting that his most recent show in Brazil was at Nara Roesler in fall 2014<\/a>. Nara Roesler has branches in S\u00e3o Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. (Muniz is also represented by Sikkema Jenkins in New York.) \u201cToday, older Brazilian art, like Oiticica, can bring millions of dollars, but we need exposure for new Brazilian talent. You have to be expensive enough for people to acknowledge it, but when art becomes expensive to the point of exclusivity, it makes it hard for young contemporary artists.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"hiago<\/p>\n
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hiago Rocha Pitta, still from the video series Temporal maps of a non sedimented land<\/em>, 2015.
\nCOURTESY GALERIA MILLAN<\/small><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Younger galleries are also finding it hard to compete in the new internationalized Brazilian market. \u201cIt is really a small group of foreign collectors, and we try to show international artists, but local collectors haven\u2019t supported them,\u201d said Juliana Freire of Emma Thomas gallery, which seemed more like an art collective when it started eight years ago, but has since grown into a well-respected gallery, thriving along with the careers of its 15 artists. It has now established itself in an open-plan gallery space in the Jardim\u2019s designed to attract not just established collectors but also people simply curious about art.<\/p>\n

Thirty-five-year-old sculptor Lucas Sim\u00f5es was the gallery\u2019s breakout artist at the last SP-Arte and is now its top artist in number of sales, although his works go for a modest $4,000 to $15,000. \u201cWe are trying to open the space to new collectors, because, frankly, the market in S\u00e3o Paulo is too small for all the galleries that have opened in the past five years,\u201d said Freire, adding, \u201cWe need to have more people from abroad curious to know what is happening here.\u201d
\nBut for a veteran like Strina, there is no limit in sight for the Brazilian art market.
\n\u201cI think it will grow very big,\u201d she said. \u201cFor the moment we only have a market in S\u00e3o Paulo, but this market is starting to spread to Rio, to the north, and to the south. And there will be a market for every kind of art: primary market, secondary market, primitive, contemporary, and modern.\u201d
\nBarbara Pollack is a contributing editor of<\/em> ARTnews.<\/p>\n

A version of this story originally appeared in the March 2015 issue of ARTnews<\/em> on page 54 under the title \u201cBoom Time for Brazil.\u201d<\/small><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n