Long time ago

São Paulo Museum of Art

(Image: Wikipedia)

I’m about to tell you something that happened a long time ago. I had to travel with Teresa to an Art Fair in. She’d exhibit her ceramics and I would do the same with my oil paintings. Those 3 days were some busy ones, and even if we had no time at all, we wouldn’t waste the chance to visit some museums there.

São Paulo is huge, chaotic and has some hellish traffic… and weather is too hot. In fact, everything is huge there.Yet, we could visit the Pinacoteca do Estado and, the day after, we escaped during the noon to the Museum of Art in the Paulista Avenue. We had just an hour and half. An almost impossible task: the collection is fabulous, it’s impossible to admire all of it, and even more, in such a little time. We split in order to look what each one of us was really interested in.

Cézanne, Mme. Cézanne
in red, 1890

I didn’t need much to think what I wanted: Renoir, Manet, Renoir, Manet, Cézanne, Toulouse-Lautrec, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Monet, Constable, Matisse… I stayed long enough in front of the Degas's dancers, trying to discover what makes those oils seem pastels. But soon after, I was attracted by Cézanne, and his characteristic brushstroke. Constable with his Salisbury Cathedral and an unfinished Van Gogh, where you could totally admire the way he used to cope with his work, were just breath-taking.

Botticelli, Virgin and Child with
John the Baptist, 1490 (Wikipedia)

I felt a bit guilty, and passed by Raphael and Botticelli: I wasn’t really impressed by them, maybe I didn’t spend enough time to admire them completely. I had to take a look at Velázquez, Titian and Tintoretto… I would have never forgiven myself otherwise. I took a glimpse of Picasso, Modigliani, Turner and Goya, since there was not much time left: I had to meet Teresa at the Museum’s shop. 

But something attracted like a magnet just right before the end: a beautiful painting by Chardin. Intimate, tiny, without stridencies, every brushstroke was part of a deep feeling: a kid playing with a spinning top, the Auguste Gabriel Godefroy Portrait. His books, his quill by his side, like if the kid was procrastinating, and leaving his school tasks for later. It’s curious: who would have said I was going to stay still there contemplating a painting from the epoch of white braids and wigs? However, it captivated me, and I still remember it until today.

Chardin, Portrait of Auguste Gabriel Godefroy, 1741

As you’ve seen probably from the list of artists I mentioned, this Museum has a really important collection, maybe the one with the most quality in whole South America… even if I still didn’t mention all the Pre-Columbian works, the Latin American art, or the Asiatic and African art pieces…

Van Gogh, Twilight Walk,
1889 (MASP)

It was founded in 1947, impulsed by Assis Chateaubriand, a press entrepeneur, which is why the Museum bears his name nowadays. The base of the collections are purchases carried out by when prices collapsed after WWII. The Italian critic Pietro María Bardi was in charge of them and added his own collection. The current building was built in 1968 and is an architectural wonder. If you travel to São Paulo, it’s not to be missed.

Constable, Salisbury's
Cathedral, 1821 (Wikipedia)

I still wanted more...enjoy every artwork, spend more time every in hall… and I still couldn’t come back there. Maybe life will take me to other places and other museums, making have to be satisfied with my memories of those 3 days in which we had to struggle against the heat and the hellish traffic in order to be on time for everything.

I never knew about Teresa again.

 web São Paulo Museum of Art

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