Lot Essay
See colour illustration
PART OF THE CHRIS AND LUCILA ENGELS ART COLLECTION, CURAÇAO, DUTCH ANTILLES
Chris (1907-1980) and Lucila (1920-1993) Engels played an important role in the cultural life of Curaçao. Chris was born in Rotterdam in 1907. After his study of medicine at the University of Leiden, he became a doctor in 1936 and moved to Curaçao in the same year. After his first wife died of childbirth he married Lucila Boskaljon in 1939. During the second world war a lot of famous, mostly Jewish, artists, such as Arthur Rubinstein, visited Curaçao and were hosted by the Engels family. Chris became chairman of the Curaçaose Kunstkring in 1941. Besides his cultural engagement, Chris continued organising medical courses, made a welfare plan for the Dutch Antilles and became chairman of the Wit Gele Kruis until 1967. Lucila started painting in 1942 as an self-taught woman, she developed considerably.
In 1947, Chris and Lucila met Willem Sandberg of the Stedelijk Museum of Amsterdam. Sandberg kindly gave his cooperation of the plan of Chris to establish a museum in Curaçao, which opened in 1948. The architect Rietveld visited the island in 1950 as did Vincent W. van Gogh and his wife in 1950. They became close friends. Sandberg organised an exhibition of the work of Chris and Lucila Engels in Amsterdam in 1950. Both became a member of Nederlandse Federatie van Beroepsverenigingen van kunstenaars
In 1951 Lucila painted the murals in the chapel of the Western District of Curaçao of which Charles Eyck made the pietà and Frida Hunziker the stained glass windows. Wil Sandberg led the exhibition of works by Vincent van Gogh in the Curaçao museum in 1954, which was a major event in the 1950's in South America.
Furthermore, works of Chris and Lucila were exhibited in Caracas, Venezuela, Museo de Bellas Arte in 1955 and was send to the Biennale in Sao Paolo in 1955 as well as in 1961 and 1963.
The works they collected are a reflection of their friendships with several international artists such as: Marino Marini, Germaine Richier and Ossip Zadkine and is mainly assembled in the 1950's.
Ossip Zadkine (1890-1967)
Details
Ossip Zadkine (1890-1967)
The cockerel
signed and numbered O. Zadkine 1/3, and inscribed with foundry mark Alex Rudier fondeur à Paris, bronze, with green patine
66 cm high (excl. base)
91 cm high (incl. marble base)
Executed circa 1943
The cockerel
signed and numbered O. Zadkine 1/3, and inscribed with foundry mark Alex Rudier fondeur à Paris, bronze, with green patine
66 cm high (excl. base)
91 cm high (incl. marble base)
Executed circa 1943
Literature
Lonel Jianou, Zadkine, Paris 1964, p. 99 (as Le Coq)
Exhibited
Willemstadt, Curaçao Museum, Zadkine, 1952, no. 26