* Author: Javier González de Durana *
Business and art are two worlds that have gone together seamlessly, with no need to look for proof of it from Hans Holbein or Quentin Matsys, since history provides a simple reminder with numerous gothic paintings depicting merchants-agents in a blend of mundane pride and spiritual passion. While not all entrepreneurs or businesses are art collectors, since doing so is not part of their objectives and tasks, the absence of a dynamic entrepreneurial fabric generating collective and individual profits would make an art market within which collectionism could emerge and develop virtually inconceivable.
Before the outset of business collectionism as a corporate activity, some companies were individual collectors. In both cases, the reasons are the same: a sensitivity (towards art), a taste (for a specific sort of art: classical, modern, painting, sculpture, etc.) and a certain economic capacity (steered towards acquiring the best pieces that providence places within their reach). These premises define the criteriology of collectionism, its scope of activities and strategy, in the same prism regardless of having been forged within the scope of individual privacy or corporate consensus.
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It is often remarked that, unlike individual collectionism, corporate collectionism only entails a strategic diversification of assets. However, private collectionism also views works of art as useful when there is a need to resort to more important necessities. It is neither anomaly nor treason, but a solution as well as a mistake. In other words, part of life itself because, ultimately, collecting is a way to live passionately that entails profits and losses, achievements and frustrations. One cannot always collect as one might wish, but the desire to do so is enough stimulation to continue pursuing the best and increasing the collection.
In this regard, the starkest contrast lies in the diffusion of the consequences of this desire, since while private collections tend to be isolated within domestic spaces that are not accessible, corporations seek to socialise their results in some manner. And Iberdrola is a fine example of this.
