Mercedes Santamarina

Mercedes Santamarina Gastañaga (18 June 1896 – 23 May 1972) was an Argentine art collector and patron. Interested in art from an early age, Santamarina amassed a large collection of pieces over the course of her life. In her last few years she donated much of her collection to the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires and the Museo Municipal de Bellas Artes Tandil in Tandil.

Biography Mercedes Santamarina was born on 18 June 1896 in Buenos Aires into an aristocratic family of Spanish origins. and she was the sixth of ten children. a large estancia (private plot of land) in Tandil in the Buenos Aires Province. Since Santamarina's father's business was also based in Tandil, she spent much of her childhood there. by artists such as Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Jean-Louis Forain, Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Auguste Rodin, Alfred Sisley, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Félix Ziem.

A large amount of artwork and fine items were auctioned off by Santamarina in 1946. Since this was the same year her mother died, many of the pieces sold had likely been her mother's property.

Towards the end of her life, Santamarina donated large parts of her still large collection of paintings, sculptures and furniture. Her collection in the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes occupies rooms 18 and 19 of the museum and was donated with the only stipulation that the collection had to be displayed together. The collection in Tandil was originally also intended to occupy two rooms but the final installation was instead put up in a single room in 1973. A large part of the collection in Buenos Aires was stolen in 1980 and a further theft (though this time of only two prints) also occurred in 1997.