The Fruit Juice Baron Who Conquered L.A.

Growing up in Mexico City, Eugenio López Alonso’s path was preordained: He was destined to become the fruit juice king of Latin America.

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As the only child and sole heir of beverage billionaire Eugenio López Rodea, he was expected to take the reins of Grupo Jumex, the family’s mammoth empire, the largest purveyor of fruit juice in South and Central America. Not exactly glamorous, but it sure was a lot of guava.

Ultimately, though, López chose a different path, and today, at 56, he’s one of the most prominent, well-connected figures in the L.A. art scene, where for the past three decades he’s not only championed emerging Latin talent in the U.S., he’s also assembled one of the most extensive private modern collections in the world, built himself one of L.A.’s most iconic modern homes, befriended some of Hollywood’s biggest stars and, perhaps most impressively, thrown some legendary, celebrity-soaked parties in a town that knows a thing or two about partying.

“When I came here in 1994,” he says, “everything changed in my life. It was a turning point. Here, there was freedom.”

While still in his 20s, López had made at least a half-hearted attempt to fall in line with the family business, accepting a position as head of marketing at his dad’s company. Still, he was rarely found at his desk doing much marketing. Instead, he was quietly pursuing his true passion — art, a love he first acquired when his parents took him on a grand tour of Europe. Back then, though, he had to find creative ways to indulge himself. “I lied to my father about going to the factory for machinery in Dallas when I was really going to the Menil Collection opening,” he recalls.

Whenever he could, López would fly to L.A., where he began to lead something of a double life — juice marketer by day, art obsessive by night. After meeting art adviser Esthella Provas, he hatched an idea to help her finance a gallery specializing in Latin American exhibits, which they were about to open in January 1994 when the Northridge earthquake hit. In a panic, he nearly backed out. “I remember driving around on a rainy day thinking, ‘Now is not the moment.’ Then, we decided, we can do this!”

For the next decade, Provas and López ran the Chac Mool Gallery on Robertson Boulevard. It provided an excuse for him to collect as well as a reason to live outside Mexico City and to finally exit the family juice firm: “I could convince my father that it was a business,” he explains.

In 2001, he persuaded his dad again, this time to let him convert a 15,000-square-foot factory at a Jumex plant north of Mexico City into an exhibition space. He had been inspired after a visit to the Saatchi Gallery, which British collector Charles Saatchi opened in a former industrial space. “If people were coming to an old factory on the outskirts of London, they could come to mine in Ecatepec,” López reasoned.

Art mavens from all over the world soon were flocking to La Coleccion Jumex, where, adjacent to pulping and pasteurization vats, López showed his rapidly growing collection of works by Mexican as well as American and European artists.

By now, López had joined the ranks of the world’s super collectors. He had the taste, and he had the cash, and he had no compunction about spending. Says one prominent curator: “A lot of collectors get nervous. They end up buying the cheaper thing, the smaller version. Then, 20 years pass, and they’re like, ‘Why didn’t I buy the big one?’ Eugenio buys the big one. He spends money.”

But he didn’t spend it all on art. In 2001, López saw a house tucked in the hills of Beverly Hills’ Trousdale Estates that he knew would make the ideal home for himself and his collection — a low-slung ranch designed in 1957 by architect Wayne McAllister, set on a verdant acre of land. But the place was dilapidated. “Are you crazy? It’s a teardown,” his father told him. Nonetheless, López took the plunge. When he closed escrow three days after 9/11, he was again beset with misgivings. The renovation that followed, overseen by architect Ron Radziger of Marmol Radziger and interior designer Vance Burke, was painstaking and lengthy.

Of course, the most stunning part of the finished house is what’s hanging on its walls, which includes (at last count) six works by Cy Twombly and other works by Andy Warhol, Donald Judd, Damien Hirst, Brice Marden, Gerhard Richter, Bruce Nauman, Bob Gober and Ed Ruscha, whose 1973 word painting, Virtue , got pride of place above López’s bed.

“It’s the coolest house on the planet. It is an absolute gem, very suave,” says dealer Larry Gagosian, citing its ” ’60’s Rat Pack vibe” and “organically flowing rooms.”

Word about the house got around. One night at Spago, Betsy Bloomingdale and Princess Ira von Fürstenberg cornered López to ask about it, then made him take them home for an after-dinner tour.

He unveiled the house more properly in summer 2004, when he threw a dinner for 300 to celebrate the UCLA Hammer Museum exhibition “Made in Mexico.” Artists, L.A. collectors and socialites mingled as go-go dancers paraded around the pool. “It was magical,” remembers Hammer director Ann Philbin.

The subsequent events López hosted at his Trousdale digs — as well as at other venues — quickly became legendary. “They were unbelievable,” one collector recalls of the fetes López held in Mexico City. “These parties could last 20 hours. You were invited for lunch, and people would be there until 6 the next morning. Parties like most people have never been to.”

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One major New York art dealer attended a López dinner in the early 2000s and to this day remembers it as “one of the great parties of all time,” recalling that instead of floral centerpieces, the tables featured terrariums filled with scorpions and tarantulas: “It was very Mexican.”

The guest lists of these events were as eclectic as the names were glamorous. “From Ed Ruscha to [Mexican pop star] Paulina Rubio and everything in between,” says one regular at López’s L.A. house parties. Recalls another, “Salma Hayek and Wendy Stark were always there. There was always a movie star, a big producer, the CAA group, along with artists, collectors and society people. It was truly a mixing place.”

Adds Kevin Huvane, one member of that CAA group: “His house in Los Angeles is the closest thing to a modern-day Renaissance salon. Eugenio has a gift for bringing people together.”

López himself, however, was sometimes not seen at his own parties, at least not until later in the evening. His late, dramatic entrances only added to the mystique around him, the enigmatic Latin playboy art collector. Still, there were unseen depths: Hidden away in the house, seldom visited by partygoers, was an enormous library stocked with books on history, art and other subjects. Notes Jeffrey Deitch, the art dealer and former director of Los Angeles’ Museum of Contemporary Art, López has read virtually every volume. “Yes, you see him out,” says Deitch, “but he is a very, very serious person, he is extremely sophisticated, really remarkable.”

A few years after moving into the house, López closed the Chac Mool Gallery and joined the board of MOCA at a time when the contemporary art scene was becoming a powerful force in the city’s rise on the global stage (he’s now the museum’s vice chair). “For the first time in my life, I was doing something I was sure was not going to be a failure,” he says, “because I had done my research, and I was passionate about what I was doing.”

What he’s especially passionate about doing is advocating for emerging talent. “There was such a lack of support for young artists,” he goes on. “If a young artist came to a potential sponsor and said, ‘Listen, I’m going to fill up a Volkswagen with water and cut it in half and I need $10,000,’ they would have said, ‘Get this crazy person out of here!’ But then I came along and said, ‘Come to me!’ ” Indeed, thanks to a grant from López, Cosmic Thing , Mexican artist Damián Ortega’s installation of a dissembled 1976 VW Beetle, is one of the defining pieces in MOCA’s collection.

In 2014, López opened a permanent museum, the Museo Jumex, for his collection in Mexico City (where he owns another sensational modernist house packed with modern masterpieces). The 43,000-square-foot, four-story museum with its distinctive sawtooth roof was designed by British architect David Chipperfield, who subsequently was awarded a Pritzker Prize, architecture’s highest honor.

“What’s wonderful about Eugenio López Alonso is his love of art and his desire to make art accessible to everyone,” says Jeff Koons, whose works are on display at Museo Jumex. “Eugenio has been making huge breakthroughs in sharing contemporary art with the public in Latin America. Everything that he brings forth through Museo Jumex and his other philanthropic endeavors shows his love of people and his desire to share the positive aspects of humanity so our lives can flourish along with future generations.”

These days, López parties less frequently than he did in his youth, and a tad less boisterously. One is more likely to spot him at the Polo Lounge, dining with such pals as Joan Collins, Candy Spelling and Nikki Haskell. As another acquaintance observes, “He loves the gays and the grays — all those old society ladies,” perhaps because those ladies have a lot more life in their night than many younger Angelenos.

“I call them for dinner on Monday night,” López explains. “Eight o’clock? Too early? Nine-thirty? ‘Perfect!’ “

“There are two kinds of people in the world: ovens and fridges. Ovens warm you and fridges leave you cold. Eugenio is one of life’s ‘ovens,’ ” Collins emails from Saint-Tropez. “He loves bringing disparate people together, is a generous, gregarious host, and he likes giving a party as much as I do. Moreover, I’ve always been impressed by his deep knowledge of show business. “

Adds Haskell: “There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for Eugenio. He is the most fabulous of all. There’s nobody like him. He has that playboy reputation. I’m not saying he’s not a playboy — but he’s a playboy with a purpose. He is the most caring and kind person I know.”

Haskell still raves about the 80th birthday party he threw for her at the house three years ago, a Studio 54-themed fete featuring dozens of drag queens, some of whom looked strikingly similar to a few of the famous guests.

Says the octogenarian birthday girl, “At Eugenio’s house, you meet everybody.”

This story first appeared in the July 22 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe .

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