The Brazilian dealers Jaqueline Martins and Maria Montero are merging their galleries to form Martins&Montero, a new joint venture. Both Martins, of Galeria Jaqueline Martins, and Montero, who founded Sé Galeria, will close their individual spaces in São Paulo and together open a new one in the city next month. Martins&Montero will also assume the existing second location of Galeria Jaqueline Martins in Brussels.
All staff across both galleries will be retained in the merger, and each artist formerly represented by either Jaqueline Martins or Sé will transition onto the roster of Martins&Montero.
Established in 2011, Galeria Jaqueline Martins grew to represent 30 artists, including Lydia Okumura, known for her site-specific minimalist installations, and the late conceptual moving-image maker Rafael França. Sé Galeria, founded in 2014, eventually assembled a 16-strong roster of names such as João Loureiro, whose Pop Art-inspired work is held in the collection of the Rio Museum of Art, among others. Both galleries have participated in leading art fairs around the world, including Frieze New York, Arco Madrid and Liste in Basel.
The newly formed Martins&Montero “will exchange dialogue about art from the Global South, with exhibiting artists responding to topical social and political issues, the history of art and poetry across various mediums”, according to a statement.
The two dealers cite a mutual ambition to grow their businesses as a key motivation for the merger, as well as a “shared friendship” and “respect for each other’s programmes”. They also believe that commercial galleries in Brazil have an “extra duty” to the public due to “serious political questions and little public funding for arts”—a challenge that is better tackled together, they add.
Their joint headquarters in São Paulo will be located in the neighbourhood of Jardim Europa, which functions as the city’s central gallery hub. Situated in a large 1950s house, it features a large garden that the pair hope can be used as a public space for people to gather—something that São Paulo “needs more of”, they say.
Martins and Montero will be joined in their new business by a third partner, Yuri Olivera, who was previously heading up the Brussels branch of Galeria Jacqueline Martins; Olivera will continue to lead operations in that location. Martins says she was prompted to open in the Belgian capital in 2020 due to its high density of conceptual art collectors. She was also encouraged by the success of another São Paulo-headquartered gallery, Mendes Wood DM, which opened a Brussels space in 2018.
To inaugurate the venture, Martins&Montero will stage connected exhibitions of work by the Brazilian artist Jota Mombaça across its two locations. Mombaça will present a video installation, ceramics and a series of drawings “that respond to the displacement of water, earth and people and investigate climate transitions”, according to a statement. The drawings were produced by the artist in different regions of Brazil and shown in 2020 at the 22nd Biennale of Sydney.
Mombaça is one of three Montero&Martins artists who will be included in the main exhibition of the 2024 Venice Biennale (20 April-24 November), along with Manauara Clandestina and Dalton Paula. That show, Foreigners Everywhere, is curated by Adriano Pedrosa, the Brazilian-born director of the São Paulo Museum of Art. Even before the biennial’s opening, it seems clear that one of its legacies will be its spotlighting of artists in Brazil who have been less recognised abroad, such as Mombaça, who, despite a “long and significant institutional presence” in the region, only gained commercial representation when she signed to Jaqueline Martins last year.