A century of Brazilian art reframed through five thematic axes tracing continuities, ruptures and shifting cultural imaginaries.
© Anita Malfatti. Courtesy of MAM Rio. Photo: Romulo Fialdini & Valentino Fialdini
The Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro (MAM Rio) opens ‘100 Years of Art: Gilberto Chateaubriand’ on 13 December 2025, the second exhibition marking the centenary of one of Brazil’s most influential collectors. Bringing together around 150 works from the 8,000-piece Gilberto Chateaubriand Collection, the exhibition reconsiders a century of Brazilian art through five conceptual nuclei that illuminate social, political and aesthetic transformations across regions and generations. Curated by Pablo Lafuente and Raquel Barreto, with assistant curator Phelipe Rezende, the exhibition draws from Chateaubriand’s deeply relational approach to collecting and the wide-ranging conversations it fostered with artists over seven decades.
Reframing a Collection Through Five Conceptual Axes
Unlike the centenary’s first exhibition, which focused on the collector’s eye, this presentation adopts an analytical framework, using the collection to interrogate the historical and conceptual currents that define Brazilian artistic production.
Beyond the Real
This nucleus assembles works that stretch representation through symbolism, spirituality, abstraction and metaphor. From early modernist gestures to contemporary practices shaped by Afro-Brazilian cosmologies, these pieces explore imagination as a way of transcending the visible world.
Constructing Landscapes
Landscape appears here as a shifting territory: from naturalist documentation to modernist reinvention, and from exuberant vistas of Rio to critical reflections on inequality, territory and belonging. Contemporary works expand the landscape into plural, contested geographies.
Relational Bodies
The body becomes a site of desire, conflict, transformation and interspecies relation. Since the 1980s, Brazilian artists have stretched the body toward the mechanical, the vegetal, and the spiritual, creating hybrid forms that challenge normative boundaries.
History as Conflict
This section confronts the violent foundations of Brazilian society, including colonisation, Indigenous dispossession, slavery, dictatorship and structural inequality. Artists examine systems of control, censorship and trauma while unsettling dominant historical narratives.
Brazilian Portraits
A century-long effort to define “the Brazilian people” unfolds across this axis. From modernist idealisation to critical self-representation, the works reveal a layered, contradictory and contested image of national identity. Scenes of daily life, labour, celebration and cultural expression form a dynamic visual archive.
Sculpture as Open Field
Complementing the thematic axes is a sculptural grouping arranged like an open plaza. Rather than forming a discrete nucleus, this constellation highlights the breadth of three-dimensional practices in Brazil, juxtaposing works that explore volume, space and material experimentation.
Artists Across Generations and Regions
The exhibition features more than 100 artists who shaped modern and contemporary Brazilian art, among them Anita Malfatti, Candido Portinari, Claudia Andujar, Ernesto Neto, Fernanda Gomes, Heitor dos Prazeres, Leonilson, Mestre Didi, Rosângela Rennó, Rubem Valentim, Tunga, Waltercio Caldas and many others whose works speak to the collection’s expansiveness and its layered dialogues.
By assembling works outside a chronological hierarchy, the exhibition creates encounters in which artistic ideas collide, echo, and illuminate one another. This synchronic approach reflects Chateaubriand’s own way of collecting, driven by dialogue, curiosity and affinity rather than rigid categorisation.
Honouring a Century of Vision
‘100 Years of Art: Gilberto Chateaubriand’ forms part of a year-long homage to the collector, expanding the reflections initiated in the earlier exhibition ‘Gilberto Chateaubriand: A Sensory Collection’. Together, the shows honour a figure whose dedication significantly shaped the trajectory of Brazilian art and its visibility. Supported by Light through Rio de Janeiro’s State Culture Incentive Law, the exhibition reinforces MAM Rio’s role as a platform for artistic reflection and public engagement.
‘100 Years of Art: Gilberto Chateaubriand’ runs from 13 December 2025 to 17 May 2026 at the Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro. Visit mam.rio for further information.
