Painting Collection

The Central Bank of Chile has one of the country’s most complete institutional collections of Chilean paintings, made up of 315 works by 57 Chilean and foreign painters, mainly belonging to the generation of the mid-19th century and to the first decades of the 20th century, also including, although to a lesser extent, some contemporary artists of more recent years.

Since its creation in 1925, the Central Bank has gradually put together its pictorial collection, which originally consisted of 96 works. Among these, we find commissioned portraits such as that of former President Arturo Alessandri Palma by the painter Coke Délano, a work currently located in the Board Room.

The paintings are displayed mainly in corridors and offices of the Bank’s building, but also in meeting rooms, such as the Herrera Guevara and the Somerscales Rooms. Among these, the Pedro Lira Room stands out, a hall for protocol use housing ten works by the artist.

The Bank’s collection brings together works by artists who constitute landmarks in the history of Chilean art, such as Pedro Luna, Arturo Gordon, Agustín Abarca and Alfredo Lobos, who belonged to the 1913 Generation. The following generation led by the so-called Montparnasse Group is represented in the Bank’s collection by Camilo Mori and Julio Ortiz de Zárate. Both artists greatly influenced what would later be called the Generation of 1928, which stood out for its innovation and which is represented by two female artists: Inés Puyó and Ana Cortés.

The 1940 Generation is also represented in the collection by artists like Carlos Pedraza and Fernando Morales Jordán, who prolonged the vision and technique developed by French impressionist painters in the last decades of the 19th century.

The collection includes works by the great masters of Chilean painting, such as Juan Francisco González, Alberto Valenzuela Llanos, Alfredo Valenzuela Puelma, Pedro Subercaseaux and Alberto Orrego Luco, as well as National Art Prize awardees: Pablo Burchard Eggeling (1944), Camilo Mori (1950), Benito Rebolledo (1959), Ana Cortés (1974) and Carlos Pedraza (1979).

The collection also includes paintings by renowned foreign artists who resided in Chile, such as Enrique Swinburn, Thomas Somerscales, Raymond Monvoisin and Gil de Castro. Finally, although represented to a lesser extent, the collection is completed with the names of more recent artists such as Nemesio Antúnez, Gracias Barrios, Patricia Israel, Ernesto Barreda, Mario Toral, Benjamín Lira and Benito Rojo.

In addition to the responsibility of hosting a collection of this magnitude, which entails ensuring its proper care and conservation, the Central Bank makes a permanent effort to disseminate this heritage through travelling exhibitions, temporary borrowings to other entities, printed and digital publications and opening its doors each year in the context of Heritage Day.