BY SANDRA CHOUTHI

Insurance company Clico has added an art gallery to its investment portfolio that includes banks, methanol, shopping malls, fine spirits, communications and real estate.

Construction of The Gallery and having Boscoe Holder as its inaugural exhibitor cost the company $3.4 million.

The Gallery was launched on June 27 at Clico’s St Vincent Street, Port-of-Spain head office.

CEO Claudius Dacon said commissioning the 84-year-old Holder for the 52-piece exhibition cost US$200,000 ($1,240,000).

Red dots under 13 of the 52 pieces indicated the ones Clico bought for the 2005 calendar.

“Boscoe is not cheap,” Dacon said in an interview at his first floor office on July 5.

“Clico is first-class,” Holder said.

Holder is having a bumper year.

Apart from being handsomely paid for the exhibition, he is Clico’s pick for the 2005 calendar and TSTT is putting his work on stamps. He exhibited in Trinidad around Carnival time and had a seven-piece, month-long exhibition in London between April and May.

The Gallery

Photos: DILIP SINGH

How art appreciates

The works of Cazabon, Atteck, Codallo, Chang and Boodhoo are “highly collectible” because their supply is “absolutely finite,” said curator Mark Pereira.

Those five artists are all dead.

“There are no fixed guidelines,” Pereira said, about what makes art appreciate. “There are no hard rules to follow.”

“A lot of it has to do with the popularity of the artist and the scarcity or availability of the work,” Pereira said. “The value of works by Cazabon, Atteck, Codallo, Chang and Boodhoo has gone up because their availability has dried up.”

Not all artists have to be dead before their works fetch handsome prices, though.

Pereira, who acquires art for private and corporate collectors, said there are a few young artists — namely Karen Sylvester and Lisa O’Connor — who have captured collectors’ attention.

Describing them as “younger masters,” Pereira said, “They are fetching fairly high prices because they have captured the attention, the imagination, of collectors, maybe up to $20,000 for a painting.”

Pereira said curators and artists usually “know where the prices should be going,” but admitted that the market usually tells them whether they have over- or under-valued a piece.

“If it’s under-valued, it sells in a flash, and if it’s over-valued, it’s slow to move, so you know you have misjudged the market.”

Pereira is now negotiating the sale of two Cazabons from Europe, the 1850 Portrait of a Lady, and a 1851 landscape sunset over Port-of-Spain, and two Codallos, Stickfight I and Stickfight II, 1957 pastelles on paper bought from a private Canadian collection.

He said the highest “hammer” price paid at a London auction for a Cazabon, an oil painting of Martinique, was £60,000 ($7.11 million). That figure excluded commission and VAT.

Guardian Holdings has several Cazabons, some of which Pereira acquired on its behalf.

Asked how does he learn of the ownership and availability of a particular piece of art, Pereira replied, “More often than not they find me.”

About the calendars, Holder said, “Thirteen calendars were made and they never asked me. I thought something was wrong with me.”

Construction of the L-shaped, 162-foot long, eight-foot wide Gallery was done from scratch. Spotlights along the white walls accentuate Holder’s signature look—chocolate-brown, long-legged West Indian women with elegantly-shaped necks.

“We looked at it as more than an investment, as a gift to the people of T&T, especially our clients,” said Dacon.

That The Gallery doubles as a thoroughfare fits in with Clico’s grassroots base.

“Many of our clients are not the type of people who will be invited to a show or an exhibition of Boscoe’s works,” Dacon said.

He made a similar statement at The Gallery’s launch when he said, “Why are the beautiful and costly original works of art, so proudly purchased by powerhouse companies, only displayed on the executive floors?”

Four large paintings decorated the wood-panelled walls of Dacon’s office. Among them, a (US)$20,000 Carl Soo Lum (St Lucia) and a Jan Kanoo (Bahamas). Dacon’s favourite is “Saraswati,” the Hindu goddess of enlightenment, intelligence, wisdom.

“All the things I lack,” said Beverly Hills, Laventille-raised Dacon in a moment of self-deprecating humour.

Clico plans to rotate its 180-piece art collection—including the ones in its CEO’s office—for display in The Gallery, but Dacon is not surrendering “Saraswati.”

The company is also building a Web site of Caribbean art, which will include 13 years of its art calendars with works by Jackie Hinkson, Derek Walcott, Isaiah Boodhoo, Irenee Shaw, Carlisle Chang and by artists from the Caribbean.

The Gallery’s opening coincided with the closure of Gallery 1,2,3,4 at The Normandie in May—to make way for conference rooms—and the sale of 101 Art Gallery on Tragarete Road.

Curator Mark Pereira said 101 is “refocusing.”

Pereira, who last month took charge of a private sale of antique furniture, rugs and paintings in St Clair, is negotiating to use another space for three months of the year.

The void left by 1,2,3,4 and 101 are being filled by The Gallery and Framed!, which opened seven months ago on the Western Main Road, Chaguaramas.

Owned by Helen Kelshall, Lisa Hahn-Ali and her husband Arnim, Framed! is looking to display young artists’ works.

“It’s possible that with 101’s temporary closure, a huge hole has opened,” Pereira conceded.

Pereira also acquires art for at least 14 companies—Republic Bank, RBTT, FCB, Sagicor, Guardian Life, Clico, Hilton Trinidad, Crowne Plaza, the Gillette Group of Companies, Caribbean Chemicals, Dairy Distributors, Lever Brothers, Ample and Associated Brands.

He also acquires art for some of the country’s most recognised families: Furness-Smith, Daly, Dulal-Whiteway, de Lima, Fernandes, Kuei Tung, Bain, Lok Jack, Salloum, Aboud, Millar, Stollmeyer, Azar, Hamel-Smith.

There are tax breaks for art investments.

Companies that buy local art can deduct from its expenditure 150 per cent of the value of up to $300,000 under the Finance Act 2000.

Long Hair

Central Bank collection

The Central Bank’s art 144-piece art has been collected over 40 years.

One of its early acquisitions was Carlisle Chang’s The Elements, Air, Earth, Fire, Water (Equinox), in 1967.

Willi Chen’s commissioned piece, Solar Marinorama, made mainly with sheet metal, has been disassembled to make way for refurbishment of the Central Bank’s main lobby.

The bank’s art pieces are a combination of paintings, copper work, sculptures and mixed media.

Among them are Vera Baney’s 1966 ceramic, “The Bird Pot,” Nancy Richards’ “Paramin Hills,” a 1963 oil painting, Sybil Atteck’s “Hosay” from 1973, and two Isaiah Boodhoos, “Landscape of Trees” and “Rain,” from 1966 and 1969, respectively.

“A nice slice of our national experience has been captured in our collection,” said Victor Maloney, the bank’s senior operations officer.

Some of the Central Bank’s pieces date back to its 1964 inception.

He said the bank’s last acquisition was in 2000, Martin Superville’s acrylic on canvas, Bele´Dancers.

Maloney’s favourite is Jackie Hinkson’s Mt Pleasant in Tobago, a 1989 watercolour.

Big bucks spent on local artists

Most local banks invest big bucks in art.

Sharon Christopher, FCB’s general manager, legal and corporate administration, said that while the most expensive paintings are displayed along the bank’s executive floors, other pieces from its collection are hung throughout its branches.

Christopher, who buys art for the bank and is a private collector, said: “FCB has an extensive art collection, about 100 pieces throughout the entire network of 21 branches.

“The bank’s philosophy started under Workers’ Bank, which continued under FCB, that we would support the local artists. To this day, we will not buy the work of a foreign artist, not even a Caribbean artist.”

Christopher said FCB used to budget yearly for art, but no longer does that because the “collection is fairly extensive.”

Likewise at Scotiabank.

Simone Penco, assistant general manager, sales and marketing, said Scotiabank does not have a policy of putting its best pieces on executive floors.

She said the bank was proud to get a request from the National Museum to borrow its Ralph Baney sculptures. Last year, Scotiabank loaned Jackie Hinkson some of his own paintings from its Maraval branch for an exhibition.

“We were one of the first companies to support him,” Penco said.

“On this floor at Park and Richmond Streets, we have at least 30 pieces. It’s like a walk-in gallery,” Penco said. “We have a big mural by Guy Beckles in the reception area.”

Though its collection is smaller than Clico’s, Angostura, which is majority-owned by Lawrence Duprey’s CL Financial, boasts of an 80-piece catalogue—from Glasgow to Greenidge and Bryden to Boscoe—displayed all over its main building.

“Our mainstay is T&T pieces. We have very few international paintings,” said Giselle Laronde-West, corporate communications manager, Angostura.

All the companies mentioned were reluctant to disclose the value of their collections.

The Central Bank has one of the most valuable local collections.

The Central Bank, like Clico and Angostura, has works by the best: Chang, Harris, Bishop, Atteck.