Fabulous Guro Mask for Sale at Tajan

On June 11, Tajan will put before the bidders an outstanding Guro dance mask in the style of the "Bouaflé Master." Featuring an exquisitely carved, embracing couple surmounting an almost otherworldly visage, this remarkable mask was once part of the collections of both André Breton and Charles Ratton and was published in Nancy Cunard's Negro: Anthology of 1934.

View the item at the Tajan website.

Charles Ratton, l'invention des arts "primitifs"

On view this summer at the Musée du Quai Branly is Charles Ratton, l'invention des arts "primitifs", an exhibition that offers an opportunity to highlight the view of Charles Ratton, an expert, dealer and collector who changed the history of the way “primitive” art was perceived by promoting objects which moved away from the taste for “Negro” art that had prevailed in early twentieth-century Europe. His close involvement in the museum world and his scientific curiosity, shown in the richness of his archives, helped his expertise to flourish. His activities as an expert, and the exhibitions he organized, contributed to the shift in status of works from Africa, America and Oceania: from anthropological study objects to works of art in the 1930s, then masterpieces in the 1960s, in France but also in the United States.

Visit the exhibition's official website.

Mask - Côte d'Ivoire

Canoe prow ornament  -  Solomon Islands

Zoomorphic slit drum  -  Congo

Figure dedicated to Gou  -  Benin, Nigeria

Images courtesy of the Musée du Quai Branly