Eugenio López Alonso

Who is Eugenio López Alonso?

Eugenio López Alonso is the founder of the Colección Jumex. It is one of the largest private modern art collections in the Americas, and said to be the largest in Latin America. His first museum space is within the Grupo Jumex’s food-processing plant in the suburbs of Mexico City. It now comprises around 1,200 works, about half by Latin American artists, most younger than 45. International artists collected by López include Olafur Eliasson, Francis Alÿs, Doug Aitken, and Maurizio Cattelan, among many others. As of 2013, the collection is reportedly worth at least $80 million. López divides his time between Mexico City and Trousdale Estates, Los Angeles.

López studied business administration at the University of Mexico. In 1993, while visiting a gallery in Beverly Hills, he met art dealer Esthella Provas, whom he later invited to become his art consultant. Together they opened the Chac Mool Gallery, a dealership focussing on contemporary Latin American art, on Robertson Boulevard in West Hollywood. In 1994, López began buying work by Mexican conceptual artist Gabriel Orozco, then relatively unknown. By the end of the 1990s, he had acquired a reputation as one of the most important contemporary art collector in Latin America.