Salomón Hale (also Solomon, called Salo)

Salomón Hale was a Polish art collector based in Mexico City. Active in the first decades of the twentieth century, Hale was an early patron of modern Mexican art and assembled an important collection of works by such artists as María Izquierdo, Frida Kahlo, José Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and Rufino Tamayo. He is best known as a collector of Rivera’s early works, particularly focused on his Cubist period. Hale also owned a smaller group of works by European modern artists.

Hale was born in Poland but immigrated to Mexico City when he was still a young man. In Mexico, he established a successful leather import business. He became an active member of the Jewish community in Mexico City and was involved in several Jewish transnational organizations. He was married to Anna Penansky, an American-Jewish immigrant from Chicago, and the couple had their first child in 1929. Although the circumstances in which Hale purchased his first works of art are not yet known, by the late 1920s he had developed relationships with several modern artists in Mexico City, including Izquierdo, Kahlo, Rivera, and Tamayo. By the mid-1930s, Hale became an important patron of the Galería de Arte Mexicano, the first modern art gallery in Mexico City. Hale purchased a number of works by Mexican artists through the gallery, as well as directly from his artist friends. He was also a benefactor of the Sociedad de Arte Moderno (Modern Art Society), an organization that supported the development of modern art in Mexico, and lent several works to the first exhibition in Mexico dedicated to Pablo Picasso (1944).

Although Hale’s collection was never catalogued, second-hand accounts reveal that, in addition to those already mentioned, it boasted paintings by Jesus Guerrero Galván and prints by Leopoldo Méndez. Hale also owned paintings by Joan Miró and Picasso, among them Paysage aux Affiches (Landscape with Posters, 1912; National Museum of Art Osaka). His large collection of works by Rivera included Retrato del escultor Elie Indenbaum, Hombre del Cigarrillo (Portrait of Sculptor Elie Indenbaum, Man with a Cigarette, 1913; Modern Art International Foundation), Edge of the Forest (1918; private collection, Mexico City), The Flower Vendor (1927; private collection, Mexico City), and Portrait of an Aurea Porcel (1928; private collection, Mexico City), among many others.