A Fine and Important Lega Ivory Head, Democratic Republic of the Congo

James Johnson Sweeny, African Negro Art, The Museum of Modern Art, 1935, cat. 512, p. 55 (unillustrated)
William Rubin (ed.), "Primitivism” in 20^th Century Art, Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern, 1984, p. 411

Lega sculpture has always been amongst the most admired and sought after genres of African art. From the first decades of the 20th century, the early collectors of African art, such as Bela Hein and Charles Ratton, pursued Lega works with its highly stylized forms. The French art dealer and collector Paul Guillaume (1891-1934), who owned this monumental Lega miniature head in the first half of the 20th century, was a passionate and extremely active member of this group. As an African art lover, he played an instrumental role in the development of the new trend of appreciation for this art form both in the post WWI Parisian euphoria and in the United States. In 1914 he organized an exhibition at Alfred Stieglitz's New York gallery "291" under the name Statuary in wood from African Savages: The roots of Modern art, the first exhibition in the United States that featured African objects as art. His work with the Barnes Foundation as adviser for acquisitions in modern paintings and African art since 1922, and the publication of the book Primitive Negro Sculpture, together with Thomas Munro in 1926, were milestones in the promotion of African art in the United States.

As Ezio Bassani (in Rubin 1984: 405 et seq.) elucidated, Guillaume had particularly strong bonds with the Italian avant-garde artists. Beginning in 1914 he represented Amedeo Modigliani, himself an avid aficionado of African art. Regarding the Lega ivory Head from the Stanoff Collection, Bassani (in Rubin 1984: 409) suggests a direct inluence on Carlo Carrà's 1915 tempera Composition with Female Figure, now in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow (see illustrations in Rubin 1984: 404 and 411). And he continues (Bassani in Rubin 1984: 409-10): "The Lega sculpture seems to have served as a point of reference for Carrà in other works as well: The head and neck of the female figure in The Star (1916, in the Zaffino Collection in Reggio Calabria) and in the preparatory drawings seem modeled on [this] figure."