New York, New York – On May 15, 2009, Sotheby’s New York will offer African and Oceanic Art from the
Collection of American sculptor Chaim Gross (1904-1991) and his wife Renee, who were among the earliest collectors
of African and Oceanic Art in the United States. Assembled in the 1940s and 1950s, the collection has remained intact
and largely unchanged since then – as if preserved in a time capsule for over sixty years. At the heart of The Renee
and Chaim Gross Foundation Collection is a group of important works acquired privately between 1940 and 1944
from the legendary Vanity Fair editor Frank Crowninshield, whose famed collection of African Art was assembled by
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Gross’s close friend and fellow artist John Graham. Many of these iconic objects were exhibited in the 1937 Brooklyn
Museum exhibition African Negro Art from the Collection of Frank Crowninshield – one of the first exhibitions of African
Art in the United States in a major institution. With the acquisition of the Crowninshield group, Gross catapulted
himself to become one of the most important collectors of African art in the United States. Highlights of the sale will
include a Ngbaka Male Ancestor Figure from the Ubangi region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (est.
$400/600,000*), set on an Inagaki base and perhaps the best-known example of its kind, acquired directly from
Frank Crowninshield; and a Senufo Kneeling Female Figure from the Ivory Coast (est. $250/350,000),
purchased in the 1950s from Merton D. Simpson.
The Crowninshield Objects
Among Gross’s closest artist friends was the painter John Graham, a passionate collector of African Art who had been
commissioned by Frank Crowninshield to identify and acquire great examples of African Art for the Crowninshield
Collection. A strong proponent of the avant-garde, Crowninshield spent over twenty years at the helm of Vanity Fair
and co-founded The Museum of Modern Art in New York. He lent several important African sculptures from his
collection to MoMA’s groundbreaking 1935 show African Negro Art. Crowninshield first began to add African art to
his own vast collection of Impressionist and Modern paintings in the 1920s. He hired Graham to direct that effort in the
United States and in Paris, where he spent summers between 1925 and 1935 buying objects from major Parisian
dealers such as Paul Guillaume, Charles Ratton and Louis Carré. Graham also worked to promote both African art and
Crowninshield’s collection, and he was instrumental in early exhibitions of
African art in the United States.
Highlights of the Gross Collection
Among the highlights of the collection to be offered is a Senufo Kneeling
Female Figure from the Ivory Coast, which measures just eleven inches high
(est. $250/350,000). Having been widely exhibited and published, the
figure’s kneeling posture represents a unique iconography and makes it one of
the best-known works from the Gross Collection. The encrusted patina is the
result of numerous applications of ritual offerings and attests to the sculpture’s
great age. Gross purchased the figurine privately in the late 1950s
