Pre-Columbian Art & Taino Masterworks from the Fiore Arts Collection

The Fiore Arts Collection of Taino art, ca. A. D. 1000-1500, is a unique private collection composed of thirty-eight works made in a variety of media including manatee bone, shell and terracotta, layered with symbolically-charged iconography.

The most important pieces have been on long term loan at Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Metropolitan Museum of Art and in special exhibitions on Taino culture in the leading institutions of the United States and Europe including the the American Museum of Natural History, the Museo del Barrio and the Petit Palais in Paris.

The works speak to the creativity of the Taino and hold a unique role in the story of the first encounter of Amerindians with Christopher Columbus and the subsequent development of Colonial patterns in Latin America.

Other Pre-Columbian highlights in the sale include an impressive Mayan Stone Hacha, ca. A. D. 550-950, featured in the groundbreaking 1970 Before Cortes exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and subsequently over the decades exhibited internationally.

Another prestigious work is an early Mayan Jade Shark pendant, ca. 250 B. C.-A. D. 250, from the storied Guennol Collection exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum of Art for several years. The Guennol Collection was formed by the prominent art collectors, Alistair Bradley Martin, and his wife Edith. The Martins built an encyclopedic collection and donated and loaned many of their most important examples of ancient Egyptian, ancient Near Eastern, Medieval and Pre-Columbian art to museum exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Brooklyn Museum of Art, among others. 

A further important section consists of an extensive group of Mezcala stone sculpture from a renowned European collection will also be offered. These geometric renderings of the human figure exemplify the powerful use of abstraction in Pre-Columbian art.