Eugenio Lopez

Eugenio Lopez, Collector, Trustee, Future Museum Head– In his native Mexico City, Eugenio Lopez is known as the dashing heir to the Jumex fruit-juice–company fortune and the radical art patron who is responsible for Mexico’s most prized collection of contemporary works. In fact, the 43-year-old Lopez is currently planning the construction of a monumental museum to house the collection in downtown Mexico City (for now the collection exists in the northern outskirts of the city inside the Jumex factory compound). No matter how much cultural weight Lopez has brought to his homeland, Los Angeles is where the collector feels most at home—and it is where he first became obsessed with contemporary art. He moved to the city in 1994 and started his own art gallery. “I opened it on Roberston Boulevard representing Latin American artists because I needed an excuse to live outside of Mexico City,” he remembers. “I could convince my father that it was a business.” Although the gallery is long gone, his interest in art has only grown. Lopez’s influence on the L.A. art scene is now seismic. Not only is he on the board of trustees at the MOCA, his massive collection travels all over the country and abroad, gaining pieces at every turn and often promoting Latin American stars. “We have over 2,400 pieces in the collection, and I change it around, even in my home, all the time,” he says. Lopez’s own sleek international-style house, tucked in the hills of Trousdale, is studded with contemporary masters: Richard Prince joke paintings, a Damien Hirst formaldehyde cow head, a Tracey Emin neon sign, a yellow aluminum Jeff Koons elephant sculpture in the back garden—even a Cy Twombly scribble painting in the bedroom that covers the television set. If there is a sense of the playboy in the scion’s collecting attitude, there is also a clear message that he is building a legacy.

Eugenio Lopez with his 2008 Mercedes-benz Slr Mclaren and holding John Chamberlain’s Date Worse Than Beth, 1989, at his Trousdale home, Los Angeles, October 2010. Suit and shirt: (Lopez’s Own): Tom Ford.

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