Brussels – Bonhams Cornette de Saint Cyr is pleased to announce its first African and Oceanic arts auction in Brussels on 17 December 2024. Sixty-two lots from the prestigious Anne and Jacques Kerchache collection of African and Oceanic Art will be offered at auction, most of them sold without reserve.

Emilie Jolly, Head of the African and Oceanic Art department in Brussels, said : "I am really thrilled to organize this first auction of African and Oceanic Art in Brussels with Tim Teuten, our consultant. In addition to masterpieces such the lizardman figure from the Paul Eluard and André Breton collection, we are delighted to present a vibrant selection of objects from the prestigious collection of Jacques Kerchache (1942-2001), some of them never seen on the market and most of them offered without reserve."

"When looking at African art, the more you feel aggressed, the more attentive you need to be, don't be afraid to be shaken up, to be jolted" said Jacques Kerchache.

Born in Rouen in 1942, Jacques Kerchache opened his first art gallery in Paris aged 18 and visited West Africa for the first time at 21. He soon began displaying traditional West African art alongside artworks by European artists. Jacques Kerchache was also an artistic advisor and curator of exhibitions. He was an advocate of the Primitive Arts, promoting their entry into important French museum collections. It was under his initiative that the Pavillon des Sessions was created at the Louvre in 2001, as well as the musée du quai Branly in 2006. Jacques Kerchache also collaborated with the Fondation Cartier on many occasions, first on the thematic exhibitions À visage découvert (1992) and être nature (1998) as well as on the solo show of the Haitian artist Patrick Vilaire in Réflexion sur la mort (1997).

Highlights from this selection include :
• A Mbembe Drum finial, exhibited in the prestigious 1987 exhibition Primitivism in 20th century art, MOMA in New York (estimate: €100,000-150,000)
• A Bembe seated figure, Democratic Republic of Congo, published in L'Art Africain, Paris, 1988, Citadelles et Mazenod (estimate: €15,000-20,000)
• A group of 18 Fon Boccio figures featured in the Vaudou exhibition at Fondation Cartier in Paris in 2001 will be offered including a Fon Boccio Figure from Benin (estimate: €15,000-20,000). As early as the late sixties, Jacques Kerchache recognized the aesthetic potency and stunning originality of voodoo statuary and its forms. During his first trips to the birthplace of voodoo currently known as the Republic of Benin, the collector began to bring together what has become the most significant existing collection of African Fon bocio statuary.
• Seven impressive Igbo figures include one published in L'Art Africain, Paris, 1988, Citadelles et Mazenod (estimate: €15,000-18,000).

One of the highlights of the sale is a lizardman figure, tangata moko from Rapa Nui (Easter Island), once owned by André Breton and later by collector René Gaffé. It was part of the famous exhibition of the Franco-Belgian mission to Oceania, at the Musée d'ethnographie du Trocadéro in 1935 ( €80,000 - 120,000).
Moai tangata moko are believed to have been hung at the entrance to or inside the houses they protected. They are hybrid figures combining anthropomorphic and reptilian elements, probably representing powerful spirits.

Other highlights of the sale include:
• A Korwar ancestor figure from Cenderawasih Bay, which was part of the extraordinary group of korwars in the collection of Henry Blekkink (1888-1953), will also be presented with an estimate of €10,000-15,000. Henry Blekkink (1888, Java - 1953, The Hague) was a Dutch geography teacher who spent the first ten years of his childhood in the Dutch East Indies. Henri Blekkink probably acquired his collection of Korwar objects from a Protestant missionary of the Utrecht Missionary Society, Frans Johannes Frederik van Hasselt (1870-1939).
• A rare Kuba Ndengese female figure, formerly in the collection of the Vicomte Theodore d'Ouvrier (1884-1950) and exhibited in Antwerp in 1937-1938 in an exhibition Tentoonstelling van Kongo-Kunst. (estimate: €30,000-50,000)
• A Mbole figure formerly in the collection of the Belgian artist and collector Jean Willy Mestach (1926-2014) (estimate: €20,000-30,000)
• A New Guinea Ancestor figure formerly in the museum of Lt Gen. A.H.L.F. Pitt Rivers (estimate: €15,000-20,000)
• An impressive Nias Ancestor figure adu zatua which was once part of the collection of George Sadoul (1904-1967), French film critic and member of the Surrealist movement (estimate: €7,000-9,000)
• A beautiful Fang reliquary figure (estimate : €25,000-30,000)