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A
rare and important Kwakiutl headdress, British Columbia Northwest Coast. Estimate: 200 000 – 300 000 euros. Photo: Courtesy
of Sotheby's.
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On 11 June 2008 Sotheby’s will offer a spectacular ensemble of art
from Africa, Oceania and British Columbia, comprising 180 lots with a total estimate of €6-9 million.
The
African art includes several iconic works, including one of the first African works of art to enter a European collection
– a Sapi-Portuguese ivory salt cellar; an 18th century bronze head from the Kingdom of Benin; and the Christina &
Rolf Mielher Collection, comprising works of rare aesthetic value from Nigeria and Cameroon. There is also an ensemble of
Oceanic art of exceptional stylistic power.
In the wake of the sales of the André Breton Collection in
April 2003 and the Robert Lebel Collection in December 2006, the personal collection of the renowned American dealer James
Economos constitutes the third major group of Eskimo and Northwest Coast art to reach auction in France over the last five
years. The ensemble pays tribute to the major role played by Surrealist artists in the recognition of the art of the Indians
of North America.
AFRICAN ART
Sapi-Portuguese Ivory Salt Cellar,
Sierra Leone, late 15th/early 16th century (lot 120, estimate €400,000-600,000) Afro-Portuguese ivories were the first
items from Sub-Saharan Africa to enter European collections. Amongst the earliest and most prestigious collections to include
ivory salt-cellars were those of the kings of France and Denmark, Emperor Charles V, the Medici family in Florence, and Albrecht
Dürer. These commissioned works offer a remarkable synthesis of cultural influences, both in terms of use and iconography.
Sixty ivory salt-cellars from the Renaissance period are known worldwide, most of them incomplete or fragmented,
and almost all in museums. The offered salt-cellar has conserved both its receptacle and cover, and is remarkable for the
quality of its carving and composition. The delicate four-figure base (two dressed as Europeans, two as Africans) gives it
a light, airy feel.
King's Commemorative Head in bronze, Kingdom of Benin, Nigeria, 18th century (lot 130,
estimate €300,000-400,000)
With its majestic proportions and superb casting, this emblematic example of royal African
art counts as one of the finest and most powerful examples of the style developed in Benin in the 18th century. The king (oba)
with royal crown, head-band and multi-layered necklace, is portrayed wearing the coral pearls reserved for him. The head comes
from the collection of Maurice Renou; who founded the Galerie Renou & Colle, a leading interwar modern art dealership,
with Pierre Colle in 1935.
Masterpieces of African sculpture
Dogon Wakara Figure, Mali, 19th century (lot
86, estimate €200,000-250,000)
This example of the rare Wakara style, which evolved in the Douenza region north-east
of Bandiagara, has scarifications and a crested, structured, zig-zag head-dress, and bears witness to the ancient and complex
history of how the region was peopled. Works in the Wakara style are rare among the extensive corpus of Dogon sculpture; the
figure here is similar to the one in the Tristan Tzara Collection shown at the famous exhibition African Negro Art at the
Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1935.
Male Statue, Senufo, Ivory Coast (lot 111, estimate €250,000-350,000)
While ethnologists agree that poro guardian figures were usually designed as couples, most of the figures we know today
are female. So this – male – figure, remarkable for its plastic qualities, is all the rarer. Its female counterpart
was in the Jacques Kerchache Collection; the pair were probably split up when they reached Europe. The offered male figure
comes from the collection of the great Paris dealer René Rasmussen, and was then in the collections of Baron Freddy
Rolin and Jeff Van der Straete (both in Brussels).
Christina & Rolf Mielher Collection, Munich
The collection
of West African art assembled in the 1970s by Christina & Rolf Mielher shows their attachment to the most powerful forms
of African art: Lobi statues with thick sacrificial patina; and mask and figures from the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. One
of the most outstanding items in the collection is a magnificent Senufo or Tussian helmet (Ivory Coast or Burkina Faso, lot
89, estimate €40,000-70,000) topped by stylized twin antelopes.
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