Storied Collection of Museu de Arte Moderna’s Founder Heads to Auction

On April 10, Sotheby’s Paris will hold a sale dedicated to Niomar Moniz Sodré Bittencourt, a Brazilian businesswoman and journalist and the founder of Museu de Arte Moderna (MAM) in Rio de Janeiro. Bittencourt, who died in 2003, was a prodigious collector of mid-century Modernist masterpieces, including works by Alberto Giacometti, Pablo Picasso, and Max Ernst, as well as leading Brazilian artists of the era including Almir Da Silva Mavignier and Franz Krajcberg.

For those unfamiliar with Bittencourt, that may soon change. Later this year, according to Sotheby’s, a biography by author Ricardo Cota will be released. Titled A Mulher que Enfrentou o Brasil (The Woman Who Faced Brazil), the book will tell how Bittencourt both shaped Brazil’s modern art scene and courageously defied the Brazilian military dictatorship of the ’60s and ’70s.

In the 1940s, while Brazil’s cultural establishment remained skeptical of modernism, Bittencourt founded the MAM with little funding and against stiff resistance. Through sheer force of will, she was able to secure support from artists and patrons across the globe, most prominently Nelson Rockfeller, then president of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Her passion for art was deeply personal but also political. Through her friendship with the artist Maria Martins, she was introduced to figures like Peggy Guggenheim, Marcel Duchamp, and Giacometti. For Bittencourt, modern art was more than an aesthetic pursuit—it was a declaration of intellectual freedom, a challenge to convention, and, ultimately, a reflection of her own unyielding spirit.

Bittencourt’s influence extended beyond the art world. Having inherited one of Brazil’s leading newspapers from her late husband, she transformed it into a staunch voice of opposition during the military dictatorship. The regime responded with force: she was imprisoned in 1969, released only after an international outcry, and eventually exiled to Paris.

Unfortunately, much of the MAM collection and her personal collection in Brazil were both lost to fires, in 1978 and the mid-1980s respectively. What remains is primarily from her modest apartment in Paris, which is what the Sotheby’s sale is drawn from.

Highlights include Picasso’s Femme nue à la guitare (1909), which is estimated to bring in between €1.2 million and €1.8 million ($1.5 million – 2.3 million) and Giacometti’s alluring sculpture Femme debout (circa 1952), estimated at €2,500,000 – 4,000,000 ($3.2 million – $5.1 million). Also notable are Les Fiancés (1930) by Ernst, which comes with an estimate of €200,000 – €300,000 ($2.5 million – $3.8 million); and Jean Dubuffet’s 1965 picture Instance, estimate at € 250,000 – €350,000 ($322,000 – $452,000).

The upcoming sale comes at a moment of renewed global interest in Brazilian modernism. The Royal Academy in London is currently holding a Brazil exhibition, a celebration of Tarsila do Amaral at the Palais de Luxembourg begins in October, and the film I’m Still Here, which tells the story of lawyer and activist Eunice Paiva during the dictatorship, place Bittencourt’s legacy in sharp relief.