Category: Collectors

Sotheby’s Paris to sell Murray Frum’s collection of Oceanic art

Post author By admin
Post date April 8, 2014

On 16 September 2014, Sotheby’s Paris will offer the collection of Oceanic art from Polynesia and Melanesia formed by the late Murray Frum. It is the most significant group to come to market in the last thirty years. The Collection of approximately 70 works contains a rich variety of exceptionally rare objects with distinguished provenance. Unique in these times are the group of pre-contact Polynesian pieces, which form the heart of the collection. The collection as a whole is valued at € 6 million to € 9 million; with about a dozen items priced at under € 5,000,-.

Murray Frum (1931-2013) was a Canadian real estate developer. His parents had emigrated to Canada from Poland in 1930, and he grew up in Canada. It was a visit to New York in the late 1950s to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York that sparked his passion for collecting. Over the next fifty years, he assembled an extraordinarily diverse collection of African, Oceanic, Pre-Columbian, Silver, Art Deco, and Renaissance art as well as Canadian paintings. Murray became known not only for his discerning eye and tremendous curiosity about the objects which he displayed elegantly in his home which he built with the modernist architects (Ron Thom, Brigitte Shim and Howard Sutcliffe), but he was also a tremendously generous philanthropic man. He loaned objects from his collection around the world, and his African collection was published and exhibited in 1980 by the great African art curator, William Fagg, ex-keeper of the British Museum. In addition, he gave part of his African art collection to the Art Gallery of Ontario. His deliberate choice of the Art Gallery for his collection demonstrated Frum’s deep conviction that tribal art should be considered as art, and not as ethnographical specimens. Click here for an overview of some of the highlights. This eulogy by one of his sons is also a must read.

UPDATE: click here for a short video of Frumm giving a small tour of his private collection as well as his collection at The Art Gallery of Ontario.

Head of a Staff God, Rarotonga, Cook Islands This magnificent sculpture is a sacred object from one of the rarest sculptural traditions in Polynesia. Formerly in the James Hooper Collection, it is the upper part of a large staff, which would have measured around 12 feet in length. The missionary John Williams claims to have destroyed the majority of these images during his time on Rarotonga between 1827-1828. Only twenty staff gods survived the early 19th century missionary presence on this small island, and most are today in museums. The Frum staff god is the first of this quality to come to auction in nearly 20 years. Estimated € 1,5 – 2,5 million.

Auctions Collectors

Auction tip: André Blandin collection of African bronzes

Post author By admin
Post date April 2, 2014

Next Saturday, 5 April 2014, the French auction house Lombrail-Teucquam will sell the André Blandin collection. Mostly bronzes, the sale includes some very rare and hard to find objects. Blandin’s 1988 publication Bronzes et autres alliages, which features many of these objects as well as the cover lot, is still one of the reference books for the bronze collector. The same can be said for Fer Noir from 1992 concerning iron African objects. Blandin’s 400 Objets africains pour la vie quotidienne lastly is essential for the collector of objects of daily use. For me, these three publications perfectly illustrate how a passionate collector can make substantial contributions to the African art scholarship. You can browse the 230 lots in detail here or download the catalogue here.

Collectors News

R.I.P. Jean Willy Mestach (1926-2014)

Post author By admin
Post date March 26, 2014
1 Comment on R.I.P. Jean Willy Mestach (1926-2014)

Last Saturday, 22 March 2014, the quintessential artist-collector, Jean Willy Mestach, passed away. His passion and eye were inspirational for a great many collectors. Mestach understood African art as no other. An artist himself, his collection was unmatched in terms of personal aesthetic choices, generated by a strong emotional and intuitional response to African art. Each object in his collection related integrally to all others, creating an ensemble widely considered as one of the best collections of African art ever and a work of art itself. I was fortunate enough to visit his apartment that looks down over the Sablon once in 2008, which for me was a life-changing experience. In his studio, a magical place, Mestach lived, worked and slept among his masterpieces, slowly and unconsiously becoming one himself. His continuing influence will forever be felt in the world of African art. The 2007 publication on his collection, L’Intelligence des Formes, the catalogue of the exhibition Mestach l’Africain, is a must-have. Rest in peace, Mr. Mestach.

Auctions Collectors Objects

A Luba mboko from the Colin Sayers collection of African art

Post author By admin
Post date March 12, 2014

A Luba Shankadi mboko figure. Ca. 1930. Height: 59 cm.

Earlier this month the Colin Sayers collection of African art was auctioned by Stephan Welz & Co. in Cape Town. You can read a tribute to the man here. The above Luba bowl bearer was the top lot of the sale and sold for € 18,000 (including premium). Most likely it was carved by by Kitwa Biseke, official carver to the Nkulu chieftainship (Mwanzi region). Many mboko from this workshop are known, but this one was a new addition to the corpus. More info can be found in an article by A. Nettleton: Burton’s Luba Mboko: Reflections of Reality, The Collection of WFP Burton (University of the Witwatersrand Art Galleries, Johannesburg, 1992, pp 51-67).

Below another mboko from this workshop published in African Fetishes and Ancestral Objects, together with a field-photo of the carver in action by Burton – click on the picture to zoom.

Tags Luba

Collectors

The Oldman collection on tape

Post author By admin
Post date February 16, 2014

A rare video documenting the famed collection of William Oldman (1879-1949) in London. This film, uploaded on Youtube by Kevin Conru, was edited using Oldman’s personal 16mm print copy and shows rooms packed with carvings, weapons and other art objects squeezed into every available space.

Collectors Museums

African art from The Barnes Foundation

Post author By admin
Post date January 4, 2014
1 Comment on African art from The Barnes Foundation

Standing male figure. Bini or Edo, Nigeria. Height: 56,5 cm. Image courtesy of The Barnes Foundation (A230).

The Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, best known for its French modernist paintings, also houses one of the earliestcollections of African art in the US. Its founder, Albert C. Barnes, regarded African sculpture as the purest example of three-dimensional form, acquiring over 100 works during an intense three-year period leading up to the opening of the Foundation in 1925. Most of the African art was acquired from the Paris dealer Paul Guillaume; who also introduced Barnes to the work of Amedeo Modigliani, Giorgio de Chirico and many others.

You can browse the collection here.

Further reading: Representing Africa in American Art Museums -A Century of Collecting and Display, edited by Kathleen Bickford Berzock and Christa Clarke, which features an essay on The Barnes Foundation & Paul Guillaume and African art, by Solveig Pigearias and Michèle Hornn, Tribal Art Magazine, no. 59, Spring 2011: pp. 78-91.

Seated couple. Baule, Ivory Coast. Height: 43 cm. Image courtesy of The Barnes Foundation (A276).

Seated couple. Dogon, Mali. Height: 70 cm. Image courtesy of The Barnes Foundation (A197).

Mask. Guro, Ivory Coast. Height: 32,5 cm. Image courtesy of The Barnes Foundation (A106).

Pendant (ikhoko). Pende, D.R. Congo. Height: 6,4 cm. Image courtesy of The Barnes Foundation (A133).

Collectors News

RIP George Ortiz

Post author By admin
Post date October 22, 2013

George Ortiz, born May 10 1927, died October 8 2013. Read his obituary here.

It was two brilliant dealers who introduced Ortiz to the other great theme of the collection: African art — Charles Ratton in Paris and John Hewett in London . Hewett enjoyed what he called “George moments”, when the collector’s passion burst forth with the force of a hurricane. One such moment was in 1967, when Hewett invited Ortiz to dinner and put a Benin bronze head on the table. The price was a then astronomical £20,000 — but Ortiz bought it and named it “Bulgy Eyes”. He believed that it was the strongest work of art he owned.

For my post about “Bulgy Eyes”, click here. To read more about what Hewett called “George moments”, click here.

For Ortiz, art was the answer to Gauguin’s question: ‘Who are we, where have we come from, and where are we going?’

Collectors News

The Tomkins Collection

Post author By admin
Post date July 8, 2013

An online presentation of a NY private collection which is worth a visit; you can find the website here.

The Tomkins Collection is a website of the arts of pre-modern cultures. The Collection focuses on objects that represent ancestors, guardians and idols, abstract or surreal. Information about the objects in this private collection has been made available to encourage others to share their collections online in an accessible format.