“De Miró à Warhol, la collection Berardo,” at Paris’s Muséedu Luxembourg from October 16 through February 22, 2009, presents a fascinating glimpse of the array of 20th-century art in the Museu Colecção Berardo, which opened in Lisbon in June 2007. The Portuguese entrepreneur José Berardo emigrated at 19 to South Africa, eventually amassing a fortune in gold and diamonds, wine, finance and telecommunications. In the 1990s, Berardo, then in his 40s, went back to Portugal and began to buy modern and contemporary art. By 2006, he had partnered with the Portuguese state to establish a museum to house his 862 works by 505 artists, valued at more than $465 million. The 75 canvases on display in Paris include Balthus's Portrait de femme en robe bleue (Mme Georges Hilaire), 1935, and Piet Mondrian's Composition with Yellow, Black, Blue, Red and Gray, 1923, which the show’s curator, André Cariou, of the Musée des Beaux-Artsde Quimper, calls “one of the most beautiful Mondrians in existence.”

"Guest Spot" originally appeared in the October 2008 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's October 2008 Table of Contents.