Biography

06/04/2009

Born in Rio de Janeiro in 1907, Ema Gordon Klabin was the second of Hessel and Fanny Gordon Klabin's three daughters. Both of them were Lithuanian immigrants who came to Brazil in the last decade of the 19th century.Her father, naturalized Brazilian in 1923, was an entrepreneur that gained distinction in the paper and cellulose industry development in the country. She was educated in Brazil, as well as in Europe (Germany and Switzerland), where she resided during the first world war. Besides her activity as a businesswoman, a duty she took over in 1946 after her father's death, Ema dedicated herself to a great number of philanthropic and humanitarian activities. Among those, her important role in the building of the Albert Einstein Israelite Hospital, in São Paulo.

Left, Ema Gordon Klabin and her father Hessel Klabin on a trip to Italy. Right, Ema Gordon Klabin in Berlin, 1925.

Music and art lover, Ema Klabin had a significant role in the city cultural life, taking part in cultural counsels, besides promoting artists, attending charity auctions (on behalf of the charity institutions she had chosen to support), and opening her house to give room to concerts with famous artists.

At the end of the 40's, she started to acquire important art pieces in many European and American galleries, from other Brazilian collectors, as well as from foreign diplomats who were in Brazil at that time. Besides some pieces which were already part of the decoration in her father's old house, Ema assembled, in the post-war period, an important body of European paintings, as well as some pieces of antique European furniture.

Ema Klabin donating the property in which the Albert Einstein Hospital would be built in São Paulo.

Soon enough she began to have the ambition to build a house where she could live and enjoy the collection, that was already taking shape, in refined surroundings. A place that was also supposed to welcome her family, her friends, as well as artists. The house, built especially to hold her collection, was opened (finalized) in 1960.

By the end of her life, not having any direct heirs, Ema Klabin was concerned with the destiny of her collection. Therefore, likewise her sister Eva Klabin Rapaport had done in Rio de Janeiro, she created the Ema Gordon Klabin Cultural Foundation, so that a new museum was to be created and opened to public visitation.

Atualizado em 20/04/2009