Magazines - Tribal Art Autumn/Winter 2005

By Elena Martínez-Jacquet, graduate of the Ecole du Louvre and specialist in African art.

Summary:
That tribal art seems to have found a place of honor in the Spanish cultural panorama is a conclusion that can be drawn from the response to Origenes: Artes Primeras, a must-see exhibition that has been on view in Madrid since October 19, and to which TRIBAL devoted an article in the Summer 2005 issue. Conceived by Ana and Antonio Casanovas, the exhibition is broad in scope and is indicative of a growing interest in tribal art on the part of the Spanish public. It further confirms––if it was necessary to do so––the excellence of Spanish collections, both public and private. Indeed, Spain holds treasures that have remained too long unknown to the international public, perhaps having been eclipsed by the major European museums to the north, and Paris and Brussels dealers.
The main public collections of tribal art are in the Spanish capitol. The Museo Nacional de Antropología, for example, created in 1875 by King Alfonse XII, houses a beautiful group of Fang reliquary guardian figures, collected in Equatorial Guinea by the Amado Ossorio expedition between 1884 and 1886. It also holds a representative collection of art works and material culture from the Philippines, which was a Spanish colony from 1565 to 1898, as well as a variety of Oceanic pieces. The Museo Naval has a fine collection of beautifully crafted Polynesian, Melanesian, and Indonesian weapons and ornaments. As would be expected, pre-Columbian art is particularly well represented in the collections of the Museo de América, an institution that also holds one of the world's most important collections of traditional art from the Pacific Northwest Coast.
Private initiatives have enriched the Spanish cultural spectrum in recent years. The Barbier-Mueller family, for examples, chose the city of Barcelona for the placement of its pre-Columbian material, and the Museu Barbier-Mueller d'Art Precolombí opened its doors in 1997. Its presence did a great deal to promote interest in the art through the presentation of thematic exhibitions such as Pre-Columbian Ceramic Treasures in the Barbier-Mueller Collection in 2003 and 2004, and Birds and Felines: Arts Compared in 2005 and 2006.
Less well known is the city of Valladolid, northwest of Madrid. It is home to the Alberto Jimenez-Arellano Alonso Foundation, created in 2004, which owns a unique collection of African terracottas.
The retail tribal art market has also been active and its development in Spain is due in large part to the activities of high-profile dealers in Madrid and Barcelona. Museum collections, special exhibitions, and a dynamic gallery presence combine to make Spain a tribal art destination of increasing importance.