100 items from the distinguished Barbier-Mueller African and Oceanic Artwork Assortment shall be auctioned at Christie’s in Paris on 6 March. The sale will concentrate on the West and Central African core of the gathering, which was created by Josef Müller within the Nineteen Thirties. The Metropolitan Museum of Artwork in New York devoted an exhibition to the gathering in 2009.
In response to a supply near the household, the choice to deaccession a portion of their assortment, which is housed on the Barbier-Mueller Museum in Geneva, follows the sudden dying of one of many three sons of the late Monique and Jean-Paul Barbier-Mueller.
Thierry Barbier-Mueller, who took over the household’s actual property firm in Geneva and was a collector of up to date artwork and design, died in January 2023 on the age of 62.
The public sale home has not disclosed the estimate for the sale nor probably the most beneficial heaps. However among the many extra historic items developing on the market are a legendary Fang reliquary head acquired by Josef Müller in 1939 from Anthony Harmless Moris, a Fang statue he purchased the identical 12 months at Ratton Gallery and a “Songye princess” purchased on the Drouot public sale home in 1937 at a sale of the painter Maurice de Vlaminck’s assortment. Two items had been purchased by Müller’s daughter Monique on the sale of Hubert Goldet’s assortment in Paris in 2001—a Baule masks from Côte d’Ivoire and an Ambete statue from Gabon.
Two spectacular gadgets—a twin Baule masks and a Baga snake masks—had been acquired by the household from the sellers Hélène Leloup and Henri Kamer, whereas a Congolese masks was purchased in 1984 from the Museum of Fashionable Artwork in New York (MoMA). The museum had acquired the masks for its resemblance with a one of many figures in Picasso’s Demoiselles d’Avignon. (The museum determined to promote it after it emerged that the masks arrived in Paris in 1930, so there was no likelihood Picasso may have seen it in 1907.)
Among the many most putting sculptures are a spectacular Kongo “howler,” a spirit pierced with nails, a twisted determine from the Easter Island and items from Papua New Guinea, notably an Abelam statue chosen by William Rubin to characteristic in his 1984 exhibition on primitivism at MoMA.
Nkisi n’kondi statue, Democratic Republic of Congo Picture: Christie’s Ltd
The Barbier-Mueller assortment was created in 1907 after Josef Müller purchased a big panel portray by Ferdinand Hodler referred to as Die Liebe (the love). The erotic frieze, which hung over Müller’s mattress, created a scandal when it was first exhibited in Zurich.
Müller was initially drawn to European avant-garde work, which have remained on the coronary heart of the gathering. However within the Nineteen Twenties he developed an curiosity in African masks earlier than turning into a daily shopper of outstanding Parisian sellers reminiscent of Moris, Charles Ratton, Pierre Vérité, Jean Roudillon and Ernst Ascher. His daughter Monique continued his ardour; she married Jean-Paul Barbier, who was himself an avid collector of Oceanic and Indonesian artwork.
