The Argentine real-estate developer and collector Eduardo F. Costantini has acquired the whole Daros Latinamerica Assortment in an unprecedented transfer. Costantini will add the 1,233 works by 117 artists (beforehand housed in Zurich) to the gathering of his Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (Malba), a number one South American museum. Plans for an enlargement of the museum constructing to make room for the works are already underway.
Some of the important institutional acquisitions of Latin American artwork in many years, the deal not solely returns the whole assortment to the area but additionally repositions Malba and Costantini’s assortment—now totaling practically 3,000 works—as among the many most necessary holdings of Latin American artwork worldwide.
Eduardo F. Costantini Picture: Alejandro Guyot, courtesy Malba
The Daros assortment, curated by Hans-Michael Herzog, is especially wealthy in artwork produced after 1950. It comprises key works by the Cuban American artist Ana Mendieta; the Brazilians Hélio Oiticica, Lygia Clark and Cildo Meireles; the Argentine Julio Le Parc; the Chilean Alfredo Jaar; and the Venezuelan Gego. With this acquisition, 75 artists are getting into the Malba assortment for the primary time, together with the Colombian Doris Salcedo, the Venezuelan Jesús Rafael Soto and the Mexican Betsabeé Romero. Different works reinforce present holdings: no fewer than 104 items by Guillermo Kuitca will arrive in Buenos Aires, together with 50 items by León Ferrari, 26 works by the Cuban collective Los Carpinteros and 9 by the Venezuelan Carlos Cruz-Diez, to call just some.
Since its founding, Malba has targeted on artwork from the area spanning from the early twentieth century to the current. Its Modernist holdings are significantly sturdy, together with works by Diego Rivera, Tarsila do Amaral, Remedios Varo, Joaquín Torres García, Wifredo Lam, Roberto Matta, Cándido Portinari and Antonio Berni. The museum additionally homes a few of the most useful works within the Latin American artwork market, together with Frida Kahlo’s 1949 Diego y yo (purchased by Costantini for $34.9m in 2021) and Leonora Carrington’s 1945 Las distracciones de Dagoberto (bought for $28.5m in 2024).
Cildo Meireles’s Missão/Missões (Como construir catedrais) (1987), a piece within the Daros assortment Courtesy Malba
The Brazilian curator Rodrigo Moura, a former chief curator at El Museo del Barrio in New York, took over as Malba’s inventive director in December 2024.
“Abruptly, it appears like being in command of a special museum,” he tells The Artwork Newspaper of the current acquisition. “That is spectacular. It adjustments every part. Malba’s nice energy has all the time been the Trendy interval, and the Daros assortment begins from the Constructive interval, so each collections complement one another completely. For me, it opens up a brand new curatorial perspective when it comes to narrative, spatiality, materiality and geography. I really feel proud to be a part of this historic second for the establishment.”
Costantini provides: “This acquisition is key for the museum. It’s the second most necessary milestone in Malba’s historical past, since its inauguration in 2001. That is in contrast to the rest, not even to the acquisition of Diego y yo or Las distracciones de Dagoberto, which have been record-breaking and extraordinary works. This adjustments our identification.”
For Malba’s founder, the acquisition brings “crucial items” to Buenos Aires; “they disrupt our identification, modify the gathering, make it extra complete and strengthen it. And due to its scale, it essentially requires a spot to be exhibited. So we’re going to develop the museum constructing, which can be nice information, so as to add extra exhibition galleries, storage and conservation amenities.”
Doris Salcedo’s Untitled (1998), a part of the Daros Latinamerica Assortment, turns into the primary work by the artist in Malba’s assortment Courtesy Malba
The enlargement undertaking, extending into the constructing’s basement, will enhance Malba’s whole area to roughly 90,000 sq. ft. Development is about to start in late 2026, with the inauguration of the brand new area scheduled for 2029, Costantini says. The Daros assortment is presently saved in a warehouse in Europe, the place it’ll stay till June 2026. In September, coinciding with the museum’s twenty fifth anniversary, a choice of the newly acquired works will go on public show.
The Daros assortment was based in 2000 by the Swiss collector Ruth Schmidheiny and her then-husband, Stephan. Since Ruth’s dying in 2019, the gathering had remained inactive, and Costantini was inquisitive about its future. By way of a mutual good friend, he met with the Schmidheiny household in November in New York and rapidly closed the deal. “We agreed on 90% of the phrases in a single assembly,” he says.
José Alejandro Restrepo’s Musa paradisiaca (1996), from the Daros assortment Courtesy Malba
When Frida Kahlo’s 1940 El sueño (La cama) just lately got here up for public sale—promoting to an nameless purchaser for $54.7m—many within the artwork world speculated that Malba’s founder is likely to be among the many events. “No,” Costantini says. “My focus was elsewhere, on one thing extra necessary. I had one thing a lot larger on my arms.”
