THE most flamboyant art collector in South America is a bouncing, bantam Brazilian with the resounding name of Francisco de Assis Chateaubriand Bandeira de Mello. What "Chato" collects goes on display in a public museum in Sao Paulo (pop. 3,300,000), and in just eleven years he has made it the hemisphere's finest outside the U.S. Chato pays for much of the art himself, and gets the rest by a grandiose form of flattery. As publisher of 32 newspapers and five magazines, and as owner of 24 radio and three TV stations, he can elaborately praise any rich Brazilian who donates good art to the museum. Quite often he praises them even before they have thought about donating.
Dynamic Publisher Chateaubriand, 66, usually selects the art himself. An initiate of the Manhattan art world recently provided a view of Chato in action: "He stood before David's great portrait of Napoleon. Slowly his hand went up and rested in his vest. Then, quick as a flash, he whirled and said, 'If I had a revolver in my hand, this painting would no longer be yours.' "
Champagne for Cèzanne. Chateaubriand, who has twice been a Senator and is now Brazil's Ambassador to the Court of St. James's, is famed for his sudden impulses. In 1946 Chatô met a visiting Italian art critic, Pietro Maria Bardi, embraced him joyfully and said: "You must make a museum for me." Almost at once, new Museum Director Bardi moved into the unfinished 34-story headquarters of Chateaubriand's Associated Dailieschain, found the great new Museum of Art in Sao Paulo hailed in headlines while there was still nothing to show in the newspaper building but raw concrete walls.
Chatô took off after art like a man possessed, and made the public love it. When the first three paintings, a Rembrandt Self-Portrait, Cézanne's portrait of Mme. Cézanne in Red, and Picasso's blue-period Mademoiselle B. (Suzanne Bloch) arrived in the nearby port of Santos, Chatô threw a shipboard champagne party to welcome them. In 1952, when Van Gogh's Schoolboy arrived in the capital city of Bahia, Chatô saw to it that school was let out and the new acquisition greeted by thousands of cheering students. Recently Brazil's President Juscelino Kubitschek turned over the presidential palace to greet another shipment of art, and Brazil's Foreign Minister staged a reception at Itamarati Palace to welcome a load of sculpture.
"Everybody likes to give money," says Chatô. "Brazilians like big things, and everybody knows I'm doing big things for Brazil." Few of his countrymen dare or care to quibble; one Brazilian industrialist who balked found himself labeled in Chatô's press as "a bandit, looter, pachyderm, hippopotamus, Berber filibuster, Barbary pirate." Typical contributors: Coffee King Geremia Lunardelli, Banker (and former Ambassador to Washington) Walther Moreira Salles, Industrialist Francisco ("Baby") Pignatari (occasional playmate of Linda Christian). Chatô himself is the most generous giver, but seems almost ashamed to admit that he ever had to reach into his own pocket. Says Director Bardi: "This is the first museum created by publicity."