Two Zacatecas Figures

Daniel M. Friedenberg, (The John Platt Collection), Greenwich

Sotheby's, New York, May 15, 2003, lot 235, consigned by the above

Daniel Hourdé Collection, Paris, acquired at the above auction

University of Virginia Art Museum, The John Platt Collection of Pre-Columbian Art, 1986

Bruce Museum, Greenwich, A Cosmic View: Pre-Columbian Art from the John Platt Collection, September 25, 1994 - January 8, 1995

Hasso von Winning, The John Platt Collection of Pre-Columbian Art, Charlottesville, 1986, pp. 40-41, fig. 23 and 24

Deborah Brinckerhoff, A Cosmic View: Pre-Columbian Art from the John Platt Collection, Greenwich, 1994, p. 40, checklist no. 108 and 109

Zacatecas figures are one of the most lively and abstract styles of West Mexico. Noted for their feather weight bodies and consistently made with stark pierced eyes, thin looped arms, and red and cream slip in geometric and resist designs. The male figure, here depicted as a musician playing a drum, has a unique hairstyle in which the hair is wrapped around upright supports, giving the appearance of mushroom-like stalks. Found in the northeastern Jalisco-Zacatecas region, this distinctive subgroup of figures was probably produced for only a few generations. The figures portray the male and female roles of ritual ceremony important within ancient societies. 

Cf. For similar examples, see Mireille Holsbeke and Karel Arnaut, eds., Offerings for a New Life: Funerary Images from Pre-Columbian West Mexico, Antwerp, 1998, p. 163, fig. 88.