Life
Berardo was born at Santa Luzia, Funchal, Madeira, Portugal, in 1944, as the seventh child of a modest family, father Manuel Berardo Gomes (born Monte, Funchal, bap. 8 November 1896) and wife Ana Rodrigues (born Monte, Funchal, 1898). Berardo left school when he was 13 years old and got a low-ranked job in the winery sector of Madeira wine. At the age of 18, he emigrated to South Africa where he worked in horticulture distribution and eventually set up large commercial ventures, becoming at the end of the 20th century one of the most renowned and wealthiest Portuguese entrepreneurs. In South Africa, he created Egoli Consolidated Mines Ltd, a gold extraction company. Initially, the gold extraction was performed using low-value waste lands that were apparently being ignored. Later, the mining company started to deal with diamond mining as well.
Berardo returned to Portugal in 1986. He has multiple businesses, including participation in many companies listed on the Euronext Lisbon. His businesses include hotels, tobacco, animal food, telecomunications, banking, and wines. He has a special interest for modern art, being one of the most successful contemporary art collectors in Portugal. By agreement with the Portuguese Government, a foundation (Fundação de Arte Moderna e Contemporânea — Colecção Berardo) was created to support the housing of his art collection at the Centro Cultural de Belém, in Lisbon. The Museu Colecção Berardo was inaugurated on June 25, 2007.
The Berardo Collection is estimated at over €316 million by Christie's. Berardo's estimated total wealth, including stock in large Portuguese banking and telecommunications companies, is over €1,900 million. Berardo is father of two (Renato Gonçalves Berardo, born in 1971, and Cláudia Gonçalves Berardo, born in 1972, wife of Zaid Abdali), born from his marriage in South Africa in 1969 with Carolina da Conceição Gonçalves, born in South Africa of Portuguese immigrants José Gonçalves and Alzira Mota. He frequently wears black clothes.
Read more about this topic: Joe Berardo
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“I don’t think life is absurd. I think we are all here for a huge purpose. I think we shrink from the immensity of the purpose we are here for.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)
“Tomorrow in the offices the year on the stamps will be altered;
Tomorrow new diaries consulted, new calendars stand;
With such small adjustments life will again move forward
Implicating us all; and the voice of the living be heard:
“It is to us that you should turn your straying attention;
Us who need you, and are affected by your fortune;
Us you should love and to whom you should give your word.””
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“... life is moral responsibility. Life is several other things, we do not deny. It is beauty, it is joy, it is tragedy, it is comedy, it is psychical and physical pleasure, it is the interplay of a thousand rude or delicate motions and emotions, it is the grimmest and the merriest motley of phantasmagoria that could appeal to the gravest or the maddest brush ever put to palette; but it is steadily and sturdily and always moral responsibility.”
—Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (1844–1911)