Celebrating 50 years of African and Oceanic art at Christie’s

In 1976, Hermione Waterfield and William Fagg spent five weeks touring 15 cities across the United States to promote Christie’s new African and Oceanic Art department.

Waterfield had worked for the auction house since 1961, cataloguing portrait miniatures, Fabergé jewels and other objects of vertu. Fagg, on the other hand, had been a renowned curator of the British Museum’s African collection since 1938, and occasionally helped Waterfield with indigenous artworks, which were squeezed into sales of arms and armour, or Far Eastern art.

In 1969, three years after the pair first met, an African work found in a potting shed sold to a member of the Lehman banking dynasty for £21,000. The astonishing price gave them an idea: a dedicated division within the auction house for sourcing and selling similar works.

In America, the pair were publicising their first sale: 196 African artworks from the collection of James Thomas Hooper, one of Europe’s pre-eminent collectors of ethnographic art. Held in London in June, it was such a success that three more auctions were organised over the following years, offering Hooper’s Hawaiian, Polynesian and Native American artefacts.

In 1977, Waterfield and Fagg were also entrusted with selling part of the largest and most important ethnographic collection ever assembled, belonging to the late Josef Mueller. One of the principal connoisseurs of the avant-garde at the turn of the 20th century, he took a pioneering approach, weaving connections across time and space between ancient objects and modern art. The bulk of his collection not offered at auction — around 7,000 objects — was put on show that same year at the Musée Barbier-Mueller in Geneva, opened by his daughter Monique and son-in-law Jean-Paul Barbier, who both safeguarded and enriched its holdings.

By the 1980s, the Christie’s department was ingrained in the African and Oceanic art collecting sphere, and Waterfield and Fagg were highly respected scholars in the field. Fagg left the auction house shortly before his death in 1992; Waterfield, now in her eighties, still keeps in contact with the department.

Continuing the pair’s tradition of tightly curated sales with a focus on academia, Christie’s has dominated the market since the turn of the millennium, auctioning all 48 works of African and Oceanic art that have surpassed the €1-million mark. In 2024, the auction house offered another 99 works from the Barbier-Mueller collection, which realised a combined total of €73 million — a new record for any single-owner sale in the category.

On 3 June 2026, to mark the department’s 50th anniversary, Christie’s in Paris will offer 14 African and Oceanic works of art at the highest level of importance, quality and provenance. Here, department head Victor Teodorescu spotlights five of them.

Malangan kepong mask, Papua New Guinea

New Ireland, part of the Bismarck Archipelago, is a rugged, 220-mile-long strip of land in the South Pacific with around 120,000 inhabitants. It’s home to the traditional Malangan culture, in which ceremonies held in the name of the recently deceased involve carved wooden masks called kepong. These were once burnt or discarded after use, but in more recent times they have been acquired by collectors instead.

‘There are four main types of Malangan kepong, which become increasingly complex,’ says Teodorescu. ‘This is a great example of the most complex type. It is in a hybrid form, part man, part bird, and its nose is carved in a narrative sequence in which a rooster surmounts a human figure standing on a snake with a fist emerging from its mouth. This elaborate mix of motifs is incredibly rare, and highlights the sculptor’s skill and creativity.’

The mask is first recorded in 1951 in the collection of Prague’s Náprstek Museum of Asian, African and American Cultures, but it belonged more recently to the Chilean Surrealist painter Roberto Matta.

‘It’s typical of the objects that inspired the Surrealists, which they studied, collected and shared,’ says Teodorescu. ‘Matta would have recognised this work as a physical manifestation of an invisible world of spirits. He is also credited with inspiring several artists from the next generation of Abstract Expressionists — including Jackson Pollock and Robert Motherwell — to turn to painting.’

Fang figure, Gabon

For the Fang people of Cameroon and Gabon, keeping spirits separated from the living is a key part of their identity. One way they achieve this is by using statues, known as byeri, to serve as guardians of reliquaries, positioned above baskets intended for ancestral bones. Usually stored in the dark corners of dwellings, they are believed to divert harmful influences.

‘Fang statues are fundamental to the history of our appreciation of African art in Europe,’ says Teodorescu. ‘They were some of the earliest pieces imported to the continent, and admired and collected by the some of the first modern artists, such as André Derain, Maurice de Vlaminck and Pablo Picasso.’

The dark, glossy patina of byeri figures, which comes from decades of ceremonial handling, was maintained by working palm oil, camwood powder and sacrificial libations into the wood’s surface.

‘This example is notably large and stands out as particularly elegant, with sensual features and a finessed coiffure. It’s a masterpiece of Fang art and, more broadly, African sculpture,’ says the specialist. ‘It was acquired some time around 1930 by the pioneering art dealer Maurice Renou, who considered it the most important African sculpture in his collection. He lent it to the 1955 exhibition Les arts africans at the Cercle Volney in Paris, which took place at a time when African art was beginning to be taken more seriously by scholars. Many years later, in 2009, it was also part of Visual Encounters. Africa, Oceania, and Modern Art at the Fondation Beyeler in Basel, which encouraged new ways of thinking about the global emergence of abstraction.’

Lega Sakimatwematwe figure, Democratic Republic of the Congo

Sakimatwematwe, which translates as ‘the man of many heads’, is a type of sculpture that embodies the heightened consciousness attributed to initiates of the uppermost rank of Lega culture in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Belonging to the realms of the ineffable, each one is embedded with esoteric teachings, which are gradually revealed over the course of a candidate’s initiation.

‘Only around 15 examples of these multiple-headed works are known, and seven of those are in American museums, including the Menil Collection in Houston, and the Fowler Museum at UCLA,’ says Teodorescu. ‘Each one reflects the unique vision of its maker. They generally fall into two types: one is characterised by curvilinear forms and an expressive approach; the other favours bold, geometric abstraction. This sculpture is one of the most profound examples of the latter, and ranks among the rarest and most important expressions of Lega art.’

Guro mask, Côte d’Ivoire

In the corpus of sculpture made by the Guro people of Côte d’Ivoire, several individual artists have been identified. According to the scholar Eberhard Fischer, this particular mask is attributable to the Master of Bron-Guro. He wrote that its masterful execution, imbued with a sense of spontaneity, reveals the creative spirit of the carver’s personality. ‘With its pure lines and harmonious volumes, this could be considered the Master of Bron-Guro’s finest work,’ says Teodorescu.

In 1984, New York’s Museum of Modern Art presented Primitivism in 20th Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern, a landmark exhibition that re-examined the shared aesthetics of Western modernism and the traditional art of Africa and Oceania. Among the many masterpieces from both realms was this mask, prominently displayed in dialogue with the work of the Italian painter and sculptor Amedeo Modigliani.

‘They share this idea of balance and beauty, with mouths that look ready to speak. Imagine reuniting it with a Modigliani portrait in a private collection, recreating these conversations,’ says Teodorescu. ‘So few works can be pinpointed to artists’ circles, let alone specific makers. This is undoubtedly one of the most important African masks we’ve ever offered.’

Makonde pipe, Mozambique

Tobacco was most likely introduced to Mozambique by the Portuguese at some point in the 16th century, and it became prized by the Makonde people. Its use was a privilege afforded to the community’s elders, especially during gatherings in which they recalled the past.

Standing 33 centimetres high, this carved wooden water pipe probably belonged to a Makonde chief, and would have ranked among his most precious possessions. Fewer than five such pipes are known to exist. One is in the Flint Institute of Arts, Michigan, and another in the National Museum of African Art in Washington, D.C. ‘This is arguably the most beautiful,’ says Teodorescu. ‘It has a wonderful form, evoking a human figure with remarkable economy, enhanced with rare beaded bracelets. But it’s also made to be used, so it has this sense of sculptural ambiguity. It has a wonderful patina as well, developed over many years of ritual use.’

The pipe is particularly well documented, having been published in the seminal 1988 work Art of Africa. It also was included in the landmark exhibition Africa: The Art of a Continent, at the Royal Academy in London between 1995 and 1996.

Arts d’Afrique et d’Océanie is on view from 30 May to 3 June 2026 at Christie’s in Paris