ART-PRESENTATION: Imaginary Ancestors

An Art Movement popular during the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, Primitivism employed images and subject matter associated with non-western peoples and locations. As a major step on the path to Modern Art, Primitivism embodied the notion of “Returning to nature.” The artistic movement is associated with artists like Paul Gauguin, Henri Rousseau, Paul Klee, and, to some extent, Pablo Picasso among other notable artists. In many ways, the Movement was a retaliation against 17th-Century beliefs in the superiority of Western civilization to other peoples encountered during the period of colonialism.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Almine Rech Gallery Archive

The group exhibition “Imaginary Ancestors” at Almine Rech Gallery, looks at Primitivism in Modern and Contemporary Art, on the one hand restaging a seminal 1933 Durand-Ruel Gallery exhibition in New York of Fang sculptures and Contemporary paintings of the time, and on the other hand presenting a parallel exhibition of Primitivist Modern and affiliated Contemporary works. “Imaginary Ancestors” comprises two parts. The first room of the exhibition present works by André Derain and Max Pechstein together with a restaging of the exhibition “Early African Heads and Statues from the Gabon Pahouin Tribes” (15/2-10/3/1933) realized by Paul Guillaume at the Durand-Ruel Gallery on 57th Street in New York, devoted to a single African art style, with a large group of Fang sculptures presented on a table alongside Derain paintings made at the time. For the exhibition, renowned primitive art specialist Bernard de Grunne sourced the majority of the sculptures included in the original exhibition, which are reunited for the first time since 1933 at Almine Rech Gallery. In the second room of the exhibition, Modern and Contemporary works inspired by primitive art aree shown with primitive pieces. From 1906 onwards, dealers like Paul Guillaume, as well as artists like Matisse, Picasso, Derain and Braque, began buying African tribal masks and figurines. As a result, the influence of “Negro art” on both painting and sculpture became quite noticeable in Paris after 1907 and in Berlin, Dresden and London after 1912. By 1920 it had become virtually universal, and continued until the early 1930s when Oceanic, Indian and Eskimo art became a leading source of inspiration for the Surrealists and their followers. On the exhibition are on presentation works by: Paddy Bedford, Joe Bradley, Alexander Calder, Agustín Cárdenas, André Derain, Günther Förg, Alberto Giacometti, Julio González, Mark Grotjahn, Wifredo Lam, Matthew Lutz-Kinoy, Ana Mendieta, Joan Miró, Ernst Wilhelm Nay, Barnett Newman, Max Pechstein, Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollock, David Smith, James Turrell and Erika Verzutti.

Info: Organizers: Carlo Severi and Bernard de Grunne, Almine Rech Gallery, 39 East 78th Street, 2nd Floor, New York, Duration: 2/5-15/6/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.alminerech.com