Magazines - Tribal Art Summer 2009

By Alex Arthur

Introduction
In 1958 a young Philippe Guimiot first set foot on African soil. Employed by the French Atomic Energy Commission, he was to be responsible for more than 1,5OO African employees working at the uranium mines in Franceville, Gabon.
Philippe was born in Marseille in 1927 and raised in Provence in the South of France. His teens coincided with the duress of WWII, which he lived firsthand in Paris. Barely an adult but with the experiences of a man, he returned to school after the war and pursued studies in law. Upon completion, he settled into a life that he quickly found boring and dissatisfying. A newspaper ad for a job in Gabon caught his eye and his dream of Africa as well as the lure of adventure swept him away. He recalls that “even on landing, I realized immediately that I loved the Africans—the innate elegance of their movements and the force of their forms immediately moved me.”
His open and fair relationship with co-workers in Gabon was acclaimed by the authorities, but politics in the region at the time, which coincided with independence and the rise of fervent nationalism, soon made life for a French liberal there quite uncomfortable. Philippe had been introduced to African art by a friend, a well-respected figure named Dr. Jean-Claude Andrault, and his interest was piqued. Eventually, he decided to leave his job and search for the masks and statues that his esteemed friend had shown him. He traveled the forest paths of Gabon and Congo Brazzaville, living in the villages and looking for artwork. He found the people to be incredibly accommodating, hospitable, and helpful. He found good pieces but had very little ressources and was obligated to sell them in order to continue. Without realizing it, he had become an art dealer.
After two years of discovery and field collecting in Gabon, Congo-Brazzaville, and Angola, Philippe settled in Cameroon, where he opened one of the first tribal art galleries on the continent. This new base in Douala obligated him to develop a network of local runners, who obtained items ranging from the court art of the royal palaces of Cameroon to undiscovered art forms from Northern Nigeria. The gallery in Cameroon led to numerous important encounters. Jacques Kerchache visited him and together they formed a fruitful collaboration over the course of two years, which led them to the forefront of discovery for the artwork of the Mama, Mumuye, and Chamba peoples amongst others. He was also visited by foreign dealers like Aaron Furman, Christian Duponcheel, Pierre Dartevelle, and Michel Huguenin. In 1971 he met a young Marc Felix and they began working together for a few years.