Paulo Prado

Paulo Prado was a Brazilian businessman, coffee planter, writer, art patron and collector who provided crucial financial backing and organizational support for the first multidisciplinary exhibition of modern art in Brazil, the Semana de Arte Moderna (Week of Modern Art, 1922). Over the course of the 1920s and 30s, Prado not only became a key figure in the intellectual and artistic circles of São Paulo’s emerging modernist movement, but also assembled a collection of modern art that included works both by his Brazilian colleagues, such as Tarsila do Amaral, Victor Brecheret, and Anita Malfatti, and European artists, such as Fernand Léger, Francis Picabia, and Pablo Picasso. Prado’s collection, one of the first of its kind in Brazil, was an important resource for early organizations dedicated to the advancement of modern art and a source of loans to early public exhibitions of European modern art in Brazil.

In 1887, while attending law school, Prado contributed to the formation of the Sociedade Promotora de Imigração (Society for the Promotion of Immigration) alongside his father and uncle, the journalist Eduardo Prado. The organization promoted immigration from Europe in order to supplement Brazil’s rural workforce during the final years of the slave system. After his graduation in 1890, Prado moved to Paris and settled into an apartment with his uncle. Through Eduardo’s contacts, his nephew immersed himself in the cultural milieu of Paris, building relationships with artists, writers, and diplomats. Prado lived in Paris until 1897, when he returned to São Paulo to manage his family’s successful coffee exporting company, the Casa Prado-Chaves.

As an already established member of Paulista society and successful businessman, in the 1910s, Prado began pursuing his interest in writing. During that time, he developed close relationships with such young artists and writers as Mário de Andrade, Oswald de Andrade, and Anita Malfatti, who wished to break free from the nineteenth-century academic traditions that still dominated Brazil’s cultural production. Prado provided crucial political and financial support for the group to pursue their modernizing project. In 1917, for instance, he purchased Malfatti’s A onda (The Wave; 1917; Sergio Sahione Fadel) from the artist, following the artist’s solo exhibition in São Paulo that same year. Five years later, he was instrumental in organizing and funding the Semana, a diverse three-day exhibition in São Paulo’s Municipal Theater, which featured the works of a new generation of Brazilian artists committed to the establishment of modern art in Brazil. In the 1920s, Prado also published two books on the history of São Paulo and Brazil, respectively: Paulística (1925) and Retrato do Brasil (Portrait of Brazil; 1928).

Looking to Paris for models that could inform the group’s vision of Brazilian cultural modernity, Prado supported the travel of several Semana artists, including Brecheret and Emiliano de Cavalcanti, to Paris in 1923 in order to advance their studies. Prado himself also traveled to Paris that year and began to acquire European modern art in the company of painter Tarsila do Amaral and fellow collector, Olivia Guedes Penteado.

Although the exact circumstances by which Prado acquired works for his collection are not known, correspondence reveals that he frequented the studios of several artists, including Léger, and had close relationships with other collectors such as Eugenia Errazuriz and such dealers as Ambroise Vollard. Prado returned to Brazil from his trip to Paris in 1923, bringing with him Léger’s L’homme au Chien (Man with Dog; 1921; private collection, Bauquier cat. no. 261), which he purchased from the Galerie Louise Leiris. He would later acquire at least two additional works by the artist, including Peinture Murale (Wall Painting; 1926; unknown location, Bauquier cat. no. 437), which he purchased directly from Léger, as well as paintings by Picasso, Picabia, and Georges Rouault. In 1924, together with Tarsila and Penteado, Prado organized the first major exhibition of European modernism to take place in São Paulo, which featured works from their personal collections; Prado contributed his works by Paul Cézanne, Robert Delaunay, Albert Gleizes, Léger, Lasar Segall, and Tarsila to the project. The exhibition commemorated a series of lectures by Blaise Cendrars on the occasion of the writer’s visit to Brazil.

Prado’s collection included not only works by European artists but also several important works by Brazilian artists, such as Brecheret’s Cabeça de mulher (Head of a Woman; 1919–21; private collection), Cícero Dias’s Sonho de uma prostituta (Dream of a Prostitute; 1930; Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro), Tarsila’s São Paulo (1924; Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo) and Urutu (Urutu Viper; 1928; Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro), and three paintings by Cândido Portinari. Prado was also a founding member of the Sociedade Pró-Arte Moderna (Pro-Modern Art Society [SPAM]) in 1932, and was part of a special commission appointed to organizing its first exhibition in 1933. This highly attended exhibition featured one hundred modern works both by the artist-members of SPAM—including Brecheret, John Graz, Malfatti, and Tarsila—as well as works of European modernism from the collections of Prado, Penteado, and Tarsila by such artists as Giorgio de Chirico, Delaunay, Tsuguharu Foujita, Albert Gleizes, Juan Gris, Marie Laurencin, André Lhote, Léger, Picasso, and Edouard Vuillard. Until his death a year later, Prado remained committed to advancing his vision of Brazilian modernity and was an important link between Paris-based avant-gardes and São Paulo’s intellectual elites.