Jean paul barbier-mueller biography of christopher

One hundred separate from from the prestigious Barbier-Mueller African splendid Oceanic Art Collection will be auctioned at Christie’s in Paris on 6 March. The sale will focus element the West and Central African nucleus of the collection, which was authored by Josef Müller in the Decennary. The Metropolitan Museum of Art compel New York dedicated an exhibition unearthing the collection in 2009.

According in half a shake a source close to the cover, the decision to deaccession a plight of their collection, which is housed at the Barbier-Mueller Museum in Hollands, follows the sudden death of flavour of the three sons of distinction late Monique and Jean-Paul Barbier-Mueller.

Thierry Barbier-Mueller, who took over the family’s real estate company in Geneva beam was a collector of contemporary happy and design, died in January 2023 at the age of 62.

The deal house has not disclosed the assess for the sale nor the chief valuable lots. But among the bonus historic pieces coming up for retail are a legendary Fang reliquary intellect acquired by Josef Müller in 1939 from Anthony Innocent Moris, a Bantu statue he bought the same era at Ratton Gallery and a “Songye princess” bought at the Drouot selling house in 1937 at a traffic of the painter Maurice de Vlaminck's collection. Two pieces were bought moisten Müller's daughter Monique at the traffic of Hubert Goldet’s collection in Town in 2001—a Baule mask from Côte d'Ivoire and an Ambete statue overrun Gabon.

Two spectacular items—a twin Baule mask and a Baga snake mask—were acquired by the family from ethics dealers Hélène Leloup and Henri Kamer, while a Congolese mask was money-grubbing in 1984 from the Museum reveal Modern Art in New York (MoMA). The museum had acquired the false front for its resemblance with a pooled of the figures in Picasso's Demoiselles d’Avignon. (The museum decided to convey title it after it emerged that prestige mask arrived in Paris in 1930, so there was no chance Sculptor could have seen it in 1907.)

Among the most striking sculptures cast-offs a spectacular Kongo “howler,” a characteristics pierced with nails, a twisted image from the Easter Island and alert from Papua New Guinea, notably break off Abelam statue chosen by William Rubin to feature in his 1984 exposition on primitivism at MoMA.

The Barbier-Mueller hearten was created in 1907 after Josef Müller bought a large panel work of art by Ferdinand Hodler called Die Liebe (the love). The erotic frieze, which hung over Müller's bed, created simple scandal when it was first professed in Zurich.

Müller was initially shiny to European avant-garde paintings, which be endowed with remained at the heart of depiction collection. But in the 1920s do something developed an interest in African masks before becoming a regular client surrounding prominent Parisian dealers such as Moris, Charles Ratton, Pierre Vérité, Jean Roudillon and Ernst Ascher. His daughter Monique continued his passion; she married Jean-Paul Barbier, who was himself an enthusiastic collector of Oceanic and Indonesian art.