ART IN MOTION
26
ABOVE: Shield. Kikuyu,
Kenya.
Ex William Moore.
To be offered by Dorotheum, Vienna,
on October 21, 2017.
BELOW: Figure, dukduk.
New Britain.
Ex Michael Hamson.
To be offered by Dorotheum, Vienna,
on October 21, 2017.
Two Sales at Christie’s
PARIS—The department of African and Oceanic art at
Christie’s in Paris is in a period of intense activity after
some key staff additions in 2016 and the achievement of
increasingly excellent sale results in recent years. Building
on this success, Christie’s will preview a selection of
works from September 12–17—coinciding with the Parcours
des Mondes art fair, which attracts visitors from
all over the world—that will be offered at the two auctions
it has announced for November 21 and 22, 2017.
The fi rst of these sales will be devoted to works from
the Claude Vérité Collection and will feature 185 major
Oceanic, Northwest Coast, and African artworks. Some
of the latter were collected by Paul Vérité in the 1950s.
Among them is a fi ne group of reliquary guardian fi gures.
The sale will be a pleasant surprise to all those who
thought that the Vérité well had run dry after the landmark
auction of 2006.
Christie’s “various owners” sale will be held on November
22. A carefully selected group of some sixty artworks
will be offered. About half of these will be Oceanic,
refl ecting an ever-increasing demand for material
from this region. One lot that promises to be the subject
of a great deal of interest will be a beautiful New Ireland
uli fi gure that has been off the market and dormant in a
private German collection for many years. A major Hemba
ancestor fi gure, a masterpiece of African sculpture,
will also be a highlight of this auction. It was acquired
by a French collector from Jacques Kerchache some forty
years ago.
Sales in Austria
VIENNA—Viennese auction house Dorotheum has appointed
Joris Visser as the new director of its tribal art
department. As a dealer in Brussels for many years and
at his family’s gallery in Amsterdam before that, he is already
well known to collectors. The fi rst sale that Visser
will produce will be held on October 21, 2017, and will
feature Oceanic and African artworks, as well as scientifi c
instruments and other curiosities.
Another sale will be held in Vienna this fall, this one
on November 18, 2017. It will be the second auction organized
by the newly established Austria Auction Company,
managed by Davut Mizrahi and Udo Langauer.
Their expert is longtime collector Alfred Weissenegger.
For more information, visit their website at www.austriaauction.
com.
RIGHT: Standing
fi gure, uli. New
Ireland.
Ex German private collection.
To be offered by Christie’s,
Paris, on November 22, 2017.
Est. 180,000–220,000 euros.
BELOW: Ancestor
fi gure, singiti. Hemba,
DR Congo.
Ex Jacques Kerchache; French
private collection.
To be offered by Christie’s,
Paris, on November 22, 2017.
Est. 200,000–400,000 euros.