treger saint silvestre: the art brut collection.! the centro de arte oliva in gugging

7 April – 11 September 2022
Curator Johann Feilacher
Museum Gugging

In cooperation with the Centro de Arte Oliva, the museum gugging is showing around 150 works by more than 80 artists from the Treger Saint Silvestre Collection.

António Saint Silvestre and Richard Treger possess one of the most extensive private collections of international Art Brut. The exhibition at the museum gugging will provide the first representative overview of this outstanding and impressively diverse collection in Austria. It includes classic artists, such as Aloïse CorbazHenry Darger and Adolf Wölfli, as well as younger ones like Kostia BotkineMisleidys Castillo Pedroso and Sébastian Ferreira. The Treger/Saint Silvestre Collection also contains works by Artists from Gugging, such as Laila Bachtiar and Philipp Schöpke, among others.

In addition to the high quality of the works it has gathered together, the Treger Saint Silvestre Collection also stands out for its global orientation. Johann Feilacher, curator of the exhibition, is looking forward to presenting his audience in Maria Gugging with a broad and otherwise scarcely accessible range of international positions from countries including Paraguay, Brazil, Cuba, Uruguay, Ivory Coast, Senegal, Iran and India.

The international character of the collection reflects that of the collectors: The pianist Richard Treger from Zimbabwe met the self-taught artist António Saint Silvestre from Mozambique in Paris, where they decided to open a gallery together. When their collecting activity took the upper hand, they sold their gallery and, since 2010, they have dedicated themselves solely to their collection, which has been housed in the Centro de Arte Oliva in Portugal since 2014.