Olmec Stone Dwarf Middle Preclassic, ca. 900-600 B.C.

with slender crouching body and both hands clutching the fleshy cheeks with fingers outspread, the characteristic large head uplifted and starring anxiously upward with one opened eye, the right side blinded; in porphyritic tuff with yellow-gray pigment in the recessed eye.

Rea Goodman Collection, New York, acquired prior to 1969
Sotheby's, New York, November 24, 1997, lot 82 consigned by the above

New York, Pre-Columbian Art in New York: Selections from Private Collections, The Museum of Primitive Art, September 12-November 9, 1969, catalogue to the exhibition by Julie Jones, fig. 13

Sotheby's, New York, November 20, 1989, lot 144

This evocative figure belongs to a small group of approximately thirty stone statues depicting dwarfs, some like this example, in an animated state of anxiety clutching their faces. This figure appears to have one blinded eye as he looks skyward. Covarrubias first related Olmec dwarfs with the chaneque trickster spirits of modern Veracruz folklore who are thought to bring rain and fertility. Lake Catemaco in Veracruz is a center for such legends. These mischievous creatures had supernatural powers, able to communicate with the spirits and travel between earth and other realms. Dwarf figures appear in various sites throughout the Olmec heartland, such as supports on the stone throne Portero Nuevo Monument 2 and a stone altar at San Lorenzo (Tate in Coe, 1995:61). In the later Maya era, dwarfs were important members of  royal courts.
For related works see Coe (1995:217, Figs. 112,113) the former in The Metropolitan Museum of Art; and Benson and de la Fuente (1996:123, fig. 2, and pg. 224-225, figs. 63a-64).