DUALA MASK
Cameroon
91 cm. high
The 1926 exhibition, Exoten, Kakteen und Janthur, (Exotica, Cacti and Janthur), at the gallery of Neumann & Nierendorf was a significant one as it was the first time the close-up photographs of plants by Karl Blossfeldt were exhibited. They were displayed alongside African and Oceanic art, cacti, and dyed cloths by Richard Janthur. Two years later it was Nierendorf who would publish the highly successful first book of Blossfeldt’s photographs, Urformen der Kunst, later published in English as Art Forms in Nature.
The exhibition included works owned by the gallery and also loaned by Alfred Flechtheim, Arthur Speyer, and the “Der Sturm” collection of Nell and Herwarth Walden. It is not clear to which of these the present mask belonged at the time.
The Nierendorf brothers, Karl (1889-1947) and Josef (1898-1949) opened their first gallery in Cologne in 1920. Karl Nierendorf established the gallery, Neumann-Nierendorf GmbH, in Berlin in 1925 and managed the gallery from 1926 to 1933 with his brother Josef.
Image : Berliner Tageblatt, 11 May 1926
Provenance
Leonard Rautenberg, Berlin
Acquired from the above by the present owner, circa 1985
Literature
“Kunst-Spiegel”, in Berliner Tageblatt, 11 May 1926, p.24
Schindlbeck, M. Gefunden und Verloren: Arthur Speyer, die dreissiger Jahre und die Verluste der Sammlung Südsee des Ethnologischen Museums Berlin, Berlin, 2012, p.141, fig.74
Exhibitions
Neumann & Nierendorf gallery, Berlin, Exoten, Kakteen und Janthur, 1926