Lot Essay
In the first decades of the 20th Century, Helena Rubinstein, later Princess Gourielli-Tchkonia, the cosmetics magnate, was a precocious and influential collector of art - ancient, African, and contemporary. In her Paris, London and New York homes these pieces were displayed together, as Madame Rubinstein was, like many of the contemporary artists she patronized, tremendously influenced by the earlier and non-Western cultures. Often she mounted artwork from her collections in her business establishments in London, Paris, New York and Buenos Aires, as many of these pieces, the sculptures of Elie Nadelman, for example, became her trademark symbols of the beautification of the modern woman.