“There isn’t a day that I don’t wake up thinking about art, about works that I would like to see, have or learn from,” he explains.
Ella Fontanals Cisneros, sitting among some of the pieces from her collection in her home in Madrid. Although she is perfectly aware of the prejudices that often accompany great collectors like her, she dismantles them as soon as she begins. «Although being a collector has become a matter of status, collecting is, in reality, an apprenticeship. There are two types of collectors: those who are interested in knowing and understanding the process and the art buyer who acquires a work because they believe it will appreciate in value, because all their friends have something by that artist or because they believe it will look good behind their sofa. ».
Considered
the great lady of Latin American artit is clear to which category she belongs when she talks about her relationship with creators, her obsession with understanding their process and studying artistic movements or when she tells how she managed to rescue the photographs of a Cuban artist from the shoe boxes kept under a bed in those who cultivated mites for years.
Also why Fontanals has an infectious faith in the power of art. «Art serves to change your mind, to see life from another point of view. I learned that with a work by Jesús Rafael Soto that, at first, I did not understand. That caught my attention and I bought it. It was a 180 degree turn for me », he explains.
He began collecting without pretensions or strategy. «I bought because I learned, I never thought if this would match the other. But he had a very specific taste. Through your collection, you show your way of seeing the world. From the 70s until now she has collected artists such as Marina Abramovic, Ai WeiWei, Damien Hirst, Carmen Herrera, Los Carpinteros, León Ferrari, Gego and a very long etcetera until accumulating more
3,000 works that have been donated to the most important museums in the worldfrom the Metropolitan in New York and the Tate Modern to the Reina Sofía.
«
She was a very tremendous and willful girl.», he remembers with a laugh about his childhood. «They told my mother that she had potential, but that she spent the day drawing: the teacher, the classroom, the classmates… As if that were a waste of time. When I was ten years old, they signed me up for painting classes and I thought I would dedicate myself to that, but we left the country and that was left behind…” explains Fontanals, who grew up in a wealthy Cuban family that fled the island after the triumph of the revolution when she was 13 years old. A year after settling in Venezuela, her father died. «I couldn’t finish studying and I started working as an English or aquatic ballet teacher. Some summers I earned more than any engineer,” she recalls. She had an entrepreneurial spirit, she always had a business on her hands: she set up a clothing store in Caracas, but also an art gallery, she had real estate businesses, a bookstore that ended up having five branches…
Ella Fontanals-Cisneros in her home in Madrid. /
Her marriage (and divorce) with Oswaldo Cisneros
He met Oswaldo Cisneros, a member of the most important family in the country and president of Pepsi-Cola, at a high society party. They married in 1968. «
Someone in the family told me that none of Cisneros’s women worked. I told her that she was going to be the first.. And I haven’t stopped working since then. Not without some difficulties. From the bank that did not want to issue her a credit card without her husband’s signature (“I asked to see the director, I told her that it seemed unacceptable to me and since she saw the trouble I was going to make, she ended up giving it to me”) or the mistakes of respect from the men he did business with: “They didn’t take you seriously. “They just wanted to take you out to dinner.”
She and the businessman were married for 30 years and had three daughters: Marisa, Mariela and Claudia.
They were the most influential power couple in the country until, in 2001, they decided to divorce.. It was a breakup without drama, reproaches or dirty laundry aired in the press. «My husband was spectacular: he supported me in everything and I supported him. We separated not because we stopped loving each other, but because we wanted different things: his life was work; mine, discover and travel. We were dear friends until the day he died », he explains. The divorce also came with some interesting discoveries. «It was like they opened a huge door for me. That thing about getting up and not having to ask anyone what you’re going to do today… I had always felt free, but I realized that I was only 80% free. Now I was 100% free! Above all, in art. I could buy whatever I wanted, without asking anyone! It was a sensation like floating. And then, something that seemed tragic became something positive,” he explains.
Sometimes, from their office, they have to call your attention. «
I’m a disaster, I’m always out of budget… They tell me: “Put your hand down!». I get too excited and there’s no room for anything else in my storage,” she confesses. Is the price of a work negotiated even with the youngest and most precarious artists? «If he is an emerging artist, you should not negotiate because you know that this painting is his way of life. With someone consolidated, of course you can. Everybody does it. You buy it in installments or pay it in ten months. “It’s a business,” says Fontanals-Cisneros, who also manages the CIFO Foundation, which since 2002 has organized exhibitions and awarded scholarships to emerging artists.
With a restless nature (“you only get old when curiosity no longer exists”), you are intrigued, for example, by how museums will evolve. «The new generations want to interact. Museums will be much more experimental. Would she go to an exhibition in the metaverse? «Going to a museum is a physical experience, one that allows you to pay the entrance fee, interact with the space, with the rest of the public… That energy is irreplaceable. However, right now there is an exhibit at the Guggenheim in New York that I would love to see, but I can’t go. If I could sit on the couch, put on glasses and see it, I would,” says Fontanals, who considers himself
a technological visionary and once tried Second Life just to see what it was that everyone was talking about.
The collector wanted to donate part of her collection to the State. /
The day Andy Warhol wanted to paint her (and she refused)
However, he is not seduced by anything that sounds futuristic either. For example, NFTs, which are considered a good way to certify the authenticity of works. But little more. «When Beeple’s work was sold for 70 million dollars it was a marketing operation by the platforms. He’s an interesting graphic artist, but he’s not worth that. I spoke to him later and asked him if he thought he would sell a work like that again. He told me no. After that boom,
Those who had paid millions for an NFT parted with them for a few thousand dollars…».
Before the pandemic, Fontanals accepted a friend’s invitation to settle in her house on the coast of Mexico and dedicate a couple of months to writing. «The publishers told me that if it wasn’t my biography they weren’t interested. One even told me to have courage! But one day I met a cousin and he told me that he was going to turn the whole family against me. And I didn’t want to make a mess,” she says. So
He opted for autofiction and began writing a novel that will soon see the light of day.. «I invented some things about Cuba that I did not experience, but that in the 70s and 80s happened to women there. I also invented an extra brother to turn into a spy. Things like that…”. He also adapted passages from his own life, such as when he met Fidel Castro and the Cuban leader challenged him to distinguish between a Coca-Cola and a Pepsi. “I felt remorse… How could I be with the man who had destroyed my family?” She now says about that meeting, organized by a friend.
His biography is full of these types of anecdotes and characters. Like when Lech Walesa traveled on his private plane from New York to Caracas.
Or when she was a neighbor of Henry Kissinger. Or when she frequented the same social circle as Donald Trump: “We went to a lot of cocktails with him and Ivanka… He didn’t leave any trace in my life.” Who impressed you the most over short distances? «Kissinger was a very intelligent man, but I tend to be more interested in enigmatic people. Like Andy Warhol. Is it true that he wanted to paint her and she refused? “Yeah. We were never friends with sitting down to have a great intellectual conversation, but we met at many parties, at Studio 54… One day his partner approached me and he told me that he wanted to take a portrait of me. I was embarrassed because she told me that every time we saw each other and I didn’t want to tell her that I didn’t like what he did. He was very young… How did it occur to me? How little knowledge… », she remembers now.
Fontanals, who resides in Madrid almost half of the year although he maintains residences in Venezuela, the Dominican Republic or Miami,
He has spent almost a decade exploring the best formula to donate an important part of his collection to the State. In fact, he even signed a preliminary agreement with the Ministry of Culture to open a museum dedicated to Latin American art in Madrid. «I had conversations with all governments: from Zapatero to Sánchez. But I’ve had enough. There was always some political problem…” There were, he says without hiding his discomfort, more than seven years of negotiations and meetings with lawyers, technicians, architects, ministers… “I wanted it to be a foundation where the government was present, but also the private sector, I wanted a mixed formula that would guarantee its continuity. After many deliberations, they told me that this was not possible. I was not going to give them the paintings so that they could do whatever they wanted with them. They are crazy? Sometimes, when you want to donate something, no one values it… », she explains resignedly.
When it was ruled out that the museum would be installed in the capital, Bilbao became interested. Although there were conversations with Basque institutions, the project, for the moment, has not come to fruition either. «They want to make a museum, but let’s see… Right now we are not talking. There are two other cities interested.
What I am clear about is that I am not going to continue wasting my time with politics. When they have the financing, call me,” he concludes.. Although he continues to lend his works to museums around the world (sometimes more than 400 pieces in a single year), he is already thinking about a plan B that, inevitably, involves thinning his collection. «Although my daughters are also collectors, I don’t want to give them that headache. I’m thinking of selling part of it. “I feel that I have a responsibility with the work and the artist.” For now, it is just a mental approach, but it is only a matter of time before it stops being that way. Unless someone fixes it…
2023-11-26 07:50:08
#Ella #FontanalsCisneros #continue #wasting #time #politicking #donate #values
