PRE-COLUMBIAN ART AT CHRISTIE’S THE 2019 SALE LEAD’S WITH A SWISS PRIVATE COLLECTION AND A VERY RARE AZTEC GODDESS Paris – 9 April

PRE-COLUMBIAN ART AT CHRISTIE’S
THE 2019 SALE LEAD’S WITH A SWISS PRIVATE COLLECTION AND A VERY RARE AZTEC GODDESS Paris – 9 April

Paris – Christie’s Paris will present on 9 April its annual Pre-Columbian auction, led by the most important private Swiss collection of Mezcala art with 90 works and further 50 lots with various owner provenances, ranging in date from 900 B.C. to 1350 A.D., from the cultures of Mezcala, Maya, Colima, Valdivia, Aztec and Veraguas. The auction is valued at a mid-estimate of €1.5 million.

Private collections in the field of Pre-Columbian art are rare and to bring these to light and to share the beauty of their items with the wider public is a true pleasure. In April 2018 the collection of the late Professor Prigogine, a Nobel Prize Chemist of Russian origin, who started collecting in the early 1960s, had not been seen publicly for over 30 years – the collection realized €1,986,750 doubling its pre-sale estimate. A year later, the upcoming Pre-Columbian auction leads with another important private collection, this time from Switzerland, where Felix and Heidi Stoll started to collect pre-Columbian art in the 1980s. As citizens of Basel, they regularly frequented the “Museum für Völkerkunde” and in 1982, whilst on a business trip, Felix Stoll visited the Metropolitan museum and which had recently opened the Michael C. Rockefeller wing of arts from the ancient Americas.

Lot 92

RARE MASQUEPORTRAIT