Sotheby’s to Offer a Classical African Statue in Its Contemporary Art Sale for the First Time - Barron's

The Clyman Fang Head will be offered at Sotheby's contemporary art evening sale in June.

Courtesy of Sotheby's

Sotheby’s will offer an African reliquary statue in its contemporary art evening sale in New York during the week of June 29, marking the first time a work of classical African art will be auctioned alongside masterpieces from contemporary art icons such as Clyfford Still, Francis Bacon and Jean-Michel Basquiat

Known as “The Clyman Fang Head,” the statue has a presale estimate of between US$2.5 million and US$4 million.

The work was offered from the collection of the late Sidney and Bernice Clyman who began collecting African art in the early 1970s. In more than half a century of collecting, the couple assembled a group of masterpiece-caliber examples of the major sculptural styles of sub-Saharan Africa, according to Alexander Grogan vice president and head of Sotheby’s African & Oceanic art department in New York.

“The Clyman Fang Head is a legendary and iconic work of art, and we are privileged to showcase a work of its quality and provenance on one the biggest stages in the art world at Sotheby’s contemporary art evening sale,” Grogan says. 

Presenting “The Clyman Fang Head” in the contemporary art sale is not only a nod to the piece’s influence on  modern art movements, including Cubism and Expressionism, but also to the New York-based collectors’ visionary taste and foresight in pairing African Art with modernist and abstract 20th century art, he says.

Willem de Kooning's Seated Man (Clown) will be offered from the collection of Sidney and Bernice Clyman at Sotheby's.

Courtesy of Sotheby's

With its exceptionally elegant geometric form, the female head expresses artistic ideas developed by pre-Colonial African artists, which were transmitted to modern masters in the early 20th century. This artistic affinity is particularly evident in Amadeo Modigliani famed stone head sculptures, Grogan says.

“The Clyman Fang Head” was first published in 1931 by its first known Western owner, Charles Ratton In the late 1930s, it sold to James Johnson Sweeney the visionary American modern art curator and writer, who, with the assistance of Ratton, organized the 1935 exhibition African Negro Art at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, according to Sotheby’s.

In 1986, the statue was sold from Sweeney’s estate at Sotheby’s in New York to William McCarty-Cooper, heir to British historian and collector Douglas Cooper The sculpture last appeared on the market in 1992, when the Clymans acquired it at auction in New York.   

This sale, set for the week of June 29, marks an opportunity that “comes once in decades,” Grogan says.    

A total of 32 works of African art from the collection of the Clymans will be offered across a series of auctions at Sotheby’s. 

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https://www.barrons.com/articles/sothebys-to-offer-a-classical-african-statue-in-its-contemporary-art-sale-for-the-first-time-01590610044

2020-05-28 01:07:57Z
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