Gerhard Haupt: Is there a moment when you notice you start to collect systematically?
Eduardo Costantini: Well, yes, in the 80s I met somebody that later became and still is my friend. His name is Ricardo Estévez and he’s a great connoisseur. He taught me what art is, he taught me how to collect. And I always say to him: The MALBA owes its great works to him. The most famous work of the MALBA is Tarsila do Amaral’s Abaporú, which I bought thanks to him, as I did many others.
Gerhard Haupt: But was it always with the criterion of collecting 20th century Latin American art, especially from the first half of the century?
Eduardo Costantini: Yes. I did buy the odd international work, but I forced myself to focus on my main responsibility: Latin American art. At the beginning, I bought Argentine and Uruguayan works, and later I came up with the idea of having a collection of Latin American art, because “united we stand” and because the possibilities of collecting the great masters were increasing -- artists such as Wifredo Lam, Diego Rivera, in addition to Brazilian artists such as Cándido Portinari and Di Cavalcanti, and, of course, the Chilean Matta, and Torres García and Rafael Barradas from Uruguay, and so on and so forth. I believe that the MALBA, in my opinion, has the world’s greatest exhibited collection of Latin American art. It undoubtedly houses very significant works, especially from that modern period, but there are also important works from the 40s and the 60s.
Gerhard Haupt: How would you define the term “Latin American art”? Artists from Latin America were an integral part of avant-garde movements in Europe ̶ like Rivera in cubism or Lam in surrealism, and so on ̶ and long before the term “globalization” was coined, there was an intense international exchange. There are also artists native of Europe who are undoubtedly considered part of the Latin American art scene, such as Mathias Goeritz or Francis Alÿs. So how do you define “Latin American”? Do you consider it as a more open term nowadays?
Eduardo Costantini: Globalization is getting stronger, no doubt, and Latin American artists are starting to integrate more as well. Many make their home abroad, or vice versa, like Francis Alÿs. But there is also a segregationist categorization of the North, because Sotheby’s and Christie’s have their Latin American art sales catalogues ̶ which I’ve just received ̶ and the Lams, the Riveras, etcetera, are all in there. The North has the power, it typifies us. You always have to see who is talking, it it’s someone from the North or from Latin America. Also inside MoMa there is a Latin American art acquisition program and there’s a Latin American curator. In the reading of western art history exhibited by MoMA, more Latin American artists start to timidly appear. Now, specifically, especially in the modern period but also later, the artists from this region that travelled to Europe and embraced the avant-garde movements always had the need to have their own identity, an identity related to their nationality or their native region. Then yes, it is true that Diego Rivera does cubism but it’s also true that his most important work from that period is Paisaje zapatista, in which there is a rifle, a sombrero and a serape. I think that the cubist Diego is very important and has distinctive features, but for me, the most significant movement in Latin American art ̶ undeniably ̶ is muralism. And what is more Mexican than Diego’s muralism? But immersed in the European trend.
And Berni, for instance, is an artist who in the 30s masters surrealism. He knew everything that was going on in the world in terms of artistic avant-garde. But works such as La siesta y su sueño, clearly also reflect the marginality that runs through Latin America, and are a veiled criticism of corruption as well.
Many anthropological issues resonate in the work of artists from Latin America, which come from the culture itself, from folklore, from experiencing nature, color ̶ because the sky in a Latin American country is not the same as in England. And the themes they explore, such as violence, exclusion, are different from the ones that may be addressed in Northern Europe, where there’s safety, less social differences. Latin America is one of the regions with the greatest inequality in the world. There are things that are very determining ̶ military governments, political violence, but also, for instance, immigration. There are thousands of themes and there are artists that are more involved in the ones I’ve just named, whereas others are more aseptic, as it also happens in Europe. Art is universal and multidirectional, that’s the most beautiful thing about art, but yes, I think there is a regional idiosyncrasy and a particular character.