MASP’s
collection
MASP is currently considered the most important art museum in the Southern Hemisphere, with about 10,000 pieces of art from Africa, Asia, Europe, the Americas including Brazil, from time periods spanning from antiquity to the 21st century and including paintings, sculptures, drawings, photographs, clothing and other media.
Besides the names of the European collection – with works by Raphael, Ingres, Van Gogh, Cézanne, Renoir, Monet and Picasso – the museum’s holdings include pieces from other cultures, such as a pair of Chinese warriors and a sculpture of the African divinity Exu. The Brazilian artworks include works by Maria Auxiliadora, Agostinho Batista de Freitas, Albino Braz, José Antônio da Silva and Rafael Borjes de Oliveira, self-taught artists who worked outside the traditional and academic art circuit and are often left outside the history of art. This group helps to construct a wider ranging and diverse panorama of Brazilian culture, alongside already recognized names like Anita Malfatti, Di Cavalcanti, Candido Portinari and Victor Meirelles.
Designated by IPHAN as a National Artistic and Historical Heritage, the museum’s collection has been enriched and enlarged through donations by individuals and through partnerships with companies and institutions.
We are in a constant process of reviewing and expanding the records of the MASP collection, in addition to making it accessible online. So far, we have a selection of just over 2,000 works from the collection, which can be consulted on the museum's website. Would you like to send us some additional information, report a mistake or suggest an improvement in the language addressed? Please write to acervo@masp.org.br.
MASP is Brazil’s first modern museum. It was founded in 1947 by Brazilian media mogul Assis Chateaubriand, who invited Italian art dealer and critic Pietro Maria Bardi to serve as MASP’s director, a position he held for nearly 45 years.
Acquired through donations from the local society, MASP’s first artworks were selected by Bardi and became the most important collection of European art in the Southern Hemisphere.
Today, MASP’s collection contains more than 10 thousand works, including paintings, sculptures, objects, photographs, and costumes from a wide range of periods, encompassing art from Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas.
We wish you a great visit and hope to see you soon at MASP!
