Côte d'Ivoire, Baule
Standing female figure "waka sona"

wood, old repair, inscribed "73" (on figure and base), pedestal by the Japanese wood artist Kichizô Inagaki (1876-1951), with signature

Paul Guillaume (1891-1934) came to Paris in the first quarter of the 20th century. He worked in a workshop that imported rubber from the French colonies. Through an African sculpture, which he had received from a supplier as a gift, he came into contact with the art critic and poet Guillaume Apollinaire, who introduced Guillaume to the circle of his artist friends. Among them were well-known names such as Maurice de Vlaminck, Andre Derain, Amedeo Modigliani and Pablo Picasso. All these artists shared their great interest in African sculpture.

In 1914, after the outbreak of World War I, Guillaume was forced to send a whole series of sculptures to New York for financial reasons, where they were exhibited in the gallery "291" by Alfred Stieglitz. With the presentation of the sculptures as the "root of modern art", the gallery "291" was the first platform that exhibited African sculptures as art.

From 1917 to 1929 Guillaume continued in his gallery in Paris, always closely associated with the artists and works of the "School of Paris". When Guillaume decided in 1929 to sell his collection of African art, Valentine Dudensing was given the opportunity to present seventy-four works of this highly regarded collection in the spring of 1930 at the Valentine Gallery in New York and to document it in a comprehensive catalogue.

The present figure was part of this important exhibition under the catalogue number 73.
H: 34,5 cm, H: 13,6 inch

Provenance:
Paul Guillaume (1891-1934), Paris, France
Valentine Dudensing, "The Valentine Gallery", New York, USA (1930)
Burrill Bernard Crohn, New York, USA (1931)
Ruth Crohn Dickler, New York, USA (by descent from the above, ~1983)
Thos. Cornell Galleries, Bellport, New York, USA (2016)
Private Collection
John Graham, Melbourne, Australia
Sotheby's, New York, May 13, 2019, Lot 206
Private Collection

Exhibited:
New York, The Valentine Gallery, "An Exhibition of Rare African Sculptures", March 24 - April 12, 1930

Published in:
The Valentine Gallery, ed., "An Exhibition of Rare African Sculptures", 1930, unpaginated, cat. no. 73

AHDRC: 0162349

Continent: Africa