Susana and Ricardo Steinbruch, Brazilian patrons: “Collecting is not just art, it is a way of living”

It is often believed that a vocation is the result of a decision.

But on certain and rare occasions, the opposite happens: it is the vocation that dictates long before the chosen one can guess it.

Susana Leirner Steinbruch has lived and thought as a collector since before she could recognize herself as such.

Perhaps the inevitable product of an early and familiar contact with the art world, that shock wave also reached her husband, Ricardo Steinbruch.

Over the years – 35 to be exact – this Brazilian couple built a shared passion and the patronage of an enviable art gallery, which is today a dynamo of the Ibero-American art scene.

The meeting with this pair of patrons was during the opening week of the São Paulo Biennial 2023, in September.

It was not the first, but one of many over 20 years.

But on this occasion, the Steinbruchs celebrated with a dinner the opening of the most emblematic artistic event in South America and which especially involves Susana, given that she is part of the Biennial commission.

We would have to wait until the next day for an in-depth conversation.

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The appointment is scheduled at his house, a wonderful exponent of the designs of Isay Weinfeld, probably one of the most recognized architects in the region.

In the tranquility of a residential neighborhood of the Brazilian capital and the silence of her desk, she will begin to illuminate the various ramifications of a family gene in the art world.

Behind an immense work table stands a library packed with books, small works and personal memories, competing for attention.

The garden that can be seen from the interior is the vanishing point where a series of sculptures are displayed that seem to have been created to inhabit that space.

“I was born with art, I always lived with it,” says Susana Leirner, almost without thinking, when she is asked why she collects.

One of the works of Lygia Clark that collectors protect.Eduardo Ortega

The house is a clear indication that collectors live there.

A first and obvious observation is the works, but it is not only about their presence but, above all, about their syntax.

Each piece is located in a particular position.

The spaces play a role there as important as the silence: they provide the necessary air for a conversation to exist.

And a sense.

But the definitive proof of a vocation that transcends it is in the traces of a legacy.

“My grandfather, on my mother's side, was one of the founders of the São Paulo Biennial and a friend of Alexander Calder.

He was one of the people who brought it to the country, along with his cousin, Henrique Midlin, who was also very involved in art.”

Guilherme Mindlin was a key figure who introduced the work of the American sculptor to Brazil and an unavoidable reference in Leirner's biography as a collector.

“When I was about 12 years old, I went to my grandfather's house, where he had a very large

cauldron

, which was at the height of the floor and we practically played inside the work.”

Names from the history of art in her country come together in Susana's memories, such as the sculptor Felicia Leirner and the visual artist Nelson Leirner, the former's son.

Her uncle, Adolpho Leirner, an emblem of vernacular patronage and a pioneer in the appreciation of Brazilian constructivism, was another central influence.

“Living with him, always looking at aesthetics;

The look of him, how he hung the pictures, marked a conception within me.”

As Uncle Adolpho described: “Collecting is nurturing a loving relationship.”

And it could be said that a good part of this family tree paid tribute to the same motto because each one, in his own way, cultivated that passion.

“This is something rare that runs in my family: a collecting disease.

From the little Bakelite boxes... I see this goes together with the other and that's where a collection begins.

And it's not just art, it's part of life."

Work of the Brazilian artist Renata Lucas.Edouard Fraipont

When Susana and Ricardo Steinbruch got married, she was 20 years old and had a clear idea: her house was going to be filled with art.

At that time, the brand new apartment only had three works under its belt.

And her new husband, a businessman dedicated to the textile industry, had not yet caught the same fervor, although he did interest her.

“In her house she had three prints of Andy Warhol.

She already had this inside of him.”

She admits that in those early days it was not easy to agree on which pieces to purchase.

“Now we buy [the works] together.

At first it was very hard.”

Perhaps the work that marked a turning point was a painting by Antonio Paz Urquiza: she had fallen in love with the painting at a biennial.

He didn't want it.

When she finally arrived at her house “we went out and saw the painting, Ricardo looked at me and started crying.”

Over the years, and as the collection has expanded to include around a thousand works of contemporary art by key figures of the Brazilian avant-garde such as Lygia Clark, Mira Schendel and Hélio Oiticica, the roles in the couple have changed.

“Ricardo came into this and now he is worse than me, he gets more excited.

Now I think about it more, there is a moment when you have to think about what is going to happen to the collection because it is a lot of work to maintain it.

It pains me to have works saved that people are not looking at, I don't see the point in this.

Then I started to think, what are we going to do with the collection?”

The role of marriage went far beyond the private sphere.

In 2010 they were recognized in the

Taster's Choice exhibition,

at the Stephen Friedman gallery, as one of the six

international

tastemakers .

His influence has played a crucial role in the evolution of museums and other collections around the world.

In 2020, they were winners of the collecting prize awarded by the Arco Foundation.

Since their patronage of the Reina Sofía Foundation, they have contributed enormously with pieces from their collection.

As a corollary of a career that does not skimp on awards, in 2023 An act of seeing that unfolds

was presented at the Reina Sofía Museum

, curated by Manuel Borja-Villel, former director of the institution, which draws on central works from the Susana Collection and Ricardo Steinbruch.

It was a long-term job.

“It was crazy to do it, we started with a loan eight years ago with a selection of 22 works.

Then, Manolo [Borja-Villel] proposed dividing the collection, we continued talking and that's when the exhibition began to be put together.

The logistics were very difficult because many of the works were in Brazil and it was a long conversation, four years since we started and in the middle the pandemic happened,” recalls Susana.

Sculpture by the Colombian artist Doris Salcedo.Edouard Fraipont

The result was an exhibition that displays a diversity of periods and geographies, but whose core is found at the intersection of two influences: contemporary Latin American art and artistic practices located in Eastern Europe in the second half of the 20th century.

Different times and places are in fine and personal harmony.

“The first impression [on opening day] was harsh.

I saw my name at the entrance and just as I entered, I left.

I felt naked.

Afterwards I was very happy with the installation, it was seeing a vision unfold in action,” he confesses.

Ricardo Steinbruch puts an emotional note on that moment.

“A whirlwind of memories comes to me, of stories.

When I saw the whole set of works, I got the feeling that it was fun, a job of many years and that, mainly, everything we did had a coherence.

“That moved me deeply.”

After all, the exhibition tells of a joint history that unites two continents.

The couple has been dividing their time between São Paulo and Madrid for 12 years. What is your notion of Spanish collecting?

“I think that in recent years it has changed a lot, but there they don't have this culture of collecting, there are very few collectors.

I think there are very few who value Spanish art,” she says.

The Steinbruchs actively contribute to enhancing the value of Brazilian art, which is still undervalued today compared to other trends.

Why it happens?

“I think there is a lot of prejudice.

In North American art, in English, the values ​​are very high and many people think about investment, they believe that Latin American art is not going to be valued.”

For Susana, speculation is not part of the equation.

“The relationship with the collection is a conversation.

We never buy just to buy.

We buy what has a relationship with the whole.”

The energy that the works transmit is another important factor: “Art for me is life.

I don’t have works that I wouldn’t live with,” she acknowledges.

This intimate coexistence with the works expands, discreetly and selectively, with the friends who visit his house.

“I found this about sharing my space and showing how we live with other people.

In my family we had art history classes, afternoons with cousins ​​and the family that lived in the same building.

I was fortunate to have experienced all that since I was little.

I think it's nice to be able to share it."

For Ricardo Steinbruch, his collection is a symbol of the path taken with Susana: “It was a spectacular journey of many years together, with the woman of my life.”

Beyond his words, it is evident that the couple's collection found its own coordinates, right there where art and life merge.

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