National Museum of Fine Arts
Paraguay's national art collection, founded on Juan Silvano Godoi's European and local holdings.
The museum grew out of the collection of Juan Silvano Godoi, a politician and writer who bought paintings and sculpture during long years of exile in Buenos Aires and in Europe. He returned to Asunción in 1909, became the first director general of museums and archives, and opened his holdings to the public in that year. The state recognised the institution as the national museum of fine arts in 1939. It shares its building with the National Archives, which keeps the country's principal historical documents.
More than six hundred works are held, among them European paintings attributed to Murillo, Tintoretto and Courbet that came from the Godoi collection, and sculpture from France, Italy and Argentina. The Paraguayan holdings begin with the nineteenth-century painters Saturio Ríos and Aurelio García and continue through Pablo Alborno and Juan Samudio to the modern generation of Olga Blinder, Carlos Colombino and Edith Jiménez. A set of fifty-seven satirical drawings by Miguel Acevedo records Asunción society of the belle époque.
Highlights
- European paintings from the collection of Juan Silvano Godoi
- Nineteenth-century Paraguayan painting by Saturio Ríos and Aurelio García
- Modern works by Olga Blinder, Carlos Colombino and Edith Jiménez
- Fifty-seven satirical drawings by Miguel Acevedo
