Roberto Polo

He owns the large collection of modern and contemporary art that ended up in Toledo and Cuenca, Spain, between 2019 and 2020. He was a friend of artists, bankers and celebrities in New York during the seventies and eighties. He spent four years in preventive detention; he proved his innocence; and was released at the conclusion of his trial. He was reborn.

Born in Cuba, Polo and his family, who had amassed great capital through the construction of tanks for oil refineries, bridges, sugar mills and distilleries, fled from Castro's Cuba. Life took Roberto Polo to Lima, Miami, New York, Massachusetts, Washington D.C., Paris, Brussels and now Toledo, Spain.

His biography is fascinating, it resembles one of those corporate charts with its peaks and its valleys. He studied at the prestigious Corcoran School of Art in Washington D.C.; he painted, stopped, and took it up again; he directed the art gallery of the Rizzoli group in New York, where he organized exhibitions such as Fashion as Fantasy, where fashion was treated as artistic expression for the first time, or those dedicated to Erté and Alphonse Mucha; he founded a company that managed the investments of important people, Private Asset Management Group; he created collections of French art from the seventeenth to the twentieth century, modern and contemporary art, and gems and jewels, considered the most important of the twentieth century.

For his multiple lives navigating through the uncharted seas of art history, identifying, investigating and shedding light on artists, movements and fundamental eras that had unjustly fallen into oblivion, Roberto Polo was christened "The Eye" by the French newspaper Le Figaro in 2004.

Roberto Polo's collections, composed of works of fine arts, applied arts, precious stones and historical jewels, spanning five centuries and various continents, have been described as "anthological" by specialized international press. In 2011, the London publisher Frances Lincoln Limited published Roberto Polo. The Eye, a highly acclaimed book that analyzes the collector's visual evolution.

Roberto Polo was born in Havana, Cuba, his family is of Spanish, Italian and French origin. He is a visual artist, art historian and collector, philosopher, philanthropist and connoisseur. One of his illustrious ancestors, José Castro González, a Galician intellectual, composer and orchestra conductor, was decorated by Charles Gounod and Ambroise Thomas at the Paris Universal Exposition of 1889.

Roberto Polo was recognized as an "art prodigy" at age 14 by the state of Virginia and obtained numerous merit scholarships, including those from the Pan American Union, the Ford Foundation and all the higher education centers he attended. He studied fine arts, art history and philosophy at the Corcoran School of Art and American University in Washington D.C., as well as at Columbia University Graduate School in New York. He was a graduate of all three mentioned institutions.

In 1967 and 1969, a groundbreaking gallery, the Jefferson Place Gallery in Washington D.C., presented Roberto Polo's work in individual exhibitions. Other artists represented by this gallery were Thomas Downing, Morris Louis, Howard Mehring, Kenneth Noland and Gene Davis, who described Roberto Polo as "the emerging star of American art".

Years later, Roberto Polo would hold individual exhibitions at the galleries Enrico Navarra in Paris, Dante Vecchiato in Padua and Vicenza and Ramis Barquet in New York. Museums such as the Newark Museum, the Corcoran Gallery of Art and the National Collection of Fine Arts of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C. acquired his work.

Roberto Polo played a crucial role in the creation of the Fine Art Investment Services department of Citibank N.A. in New York, the first of its kind in the history of the banking sector. He directed three important galleries: Jacob Frères Limited in New York, Galerie Historismus in Paris and Roberto Polo Gallery in Brussels.

As a philanthropist, not only does he sponsor artists of different expressions but he is also a patron and donor to numerous cultural institutions, among them: Musée du Louvre; Musée des Arts Décoratifs and La Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris; The New Art Gallery in Walsall; Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh; The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City; Musées royaux d'Art et d'Histoire de Belgique, Flagey, Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie and Musée Horta in Brussels; Museo Nacional de Gdańsk; Museo de la Historia de los Judíos Polacos in Warsaw; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Minneapolis Institute of Arts; Musée Condé, Château de Chantilly; Victoria and Albert Museum in London; Save Venice Organization Inc. and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where his name is carved in stone.

Some of the numerous honorary mentions that have been bestowed upon him are: Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et Lettres de la République Française (Paris, 1988); Capital Arte Prize for International Patronage (Madrid, 2016), and Outstanding Prize, Person of the Year, Philanthropy category, (Madrid, 2017).

Kathryn Hiesinger, chief curator of European decorative arts at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, has said of him: "Roberto Polo is a brilliant and enigmatic collector, a giant of the artistic universe. He is in love with art and is a cult figure".