Walker Evans (1903-1975); Figure, Cameroon, Bango, Grassland (African Sculpture 313);

Walker Evans (1903-1975) Figure, Cameroon, Bango, Grassland (African Sculpture 313), 1935 Gelatin silver print; the Lunn Gallery stamp, with numbers 'XX' and '313' in pencil, on the reverse, framed. 9 1/4 x 4 1/4 in. (23.5 x 10.8 cm.) Footnotes: Provenance Estate of the Photographer Harry Lunn Note In late 1934, The Museum of Modern Art in New York announced its plan to mount African Negro Art, a groundbreaking exhibition of African sculpture comprising 603 works – at the time, far and above the largest survey of this material ever held. Selected by MoMA curator James Johnson Sweeney with the assistance of museum director Alfred H. Barr, Jr., this group of objects represented the first time an American institution assembled and displayed African art for the purposes of emphasizing its aesthetic qualities, rather than the oft exhibited tendency of highlighting items of ethnographic curiosity. Of African sculpture as a discipline, Sweeney argued in the exhibition catalogue, 'As a sculptural tradition in the last century it has had no rival. It is as sculpture we should approach it.' The museum's permanent collection already housed many paintings and sculptures that had found immense inspiration in African tribal art. African Negro Art opened on 18 March 1935 and ran for exactly two months. Sweeney's exhibition catalogue provided a comprehensive listing of the works in the exhibition, their lenders, an introductory text, and several maps, Barr aspired to a more complete record that could both expand the show's audience and serve as an educational resource. He drafted a proposal to the General Education Board of the Rockefeller Foundation, imploring that they grant him funding to hire a photographer for such a purpose. Walker Evans, having just spent months in Cuba documenting the revolution and refining his own craft, was the Museum's natural choice. Evans spent the final days of the exhibition photographing artwork in the galleries for six hours every night with assistant curator Dorothy Miller, ultimately producing and printing seventeen sets of 477 prints. Once completed, the museum proposed that sets of these images should be donated to African American colleges and libraries; some would be made available for purchase by ethnographic museums and libraries, as well as the exhibition organizers; and the museum would retain a single set for its records. In addition, a selection of seventy-five enlargement prints were made for a traveling exhibition that would be slated for a wider circulation than was possible of the original group. In the ensuing decades, the MoMA survey would come to be regarded as a catalyst for placing African Art within in the historical context of Western art, an event made entirely possible by the breadth and reach of Evans' work. For further information on this lot please visit Bonhams.com For further information about this lot please visit the lot listing