PARIS, FRANCE.- Sotheby's Paris will feature works from the Paolo Morigi collection on June 6. The Paolo Morigi collection is a unique ensemble, a combination of the most prestigious provenances in the field and pieces of never less than outstanding quality. The collection of 150 works also illustrates the history of the Western world's perception of African art since and its influence on some of the greatest 20th century artists.

Paolo Morigi, a Swiss citizen of Italian origin, nurtured a passion for African art for more than forty years. Following in the footsteps of two of the greatest pioneers in this area, G.F. Keller and Han Coray, he roamed areas of West Africa, such as the CTMte d'Ivoire and Liberia, building up a wealth of knowledge on the subject of African art. At the end of the 1960s he acquired the Han Coray collection of African art, followed in 1989 by the G.F. Keller collection. He continued adding to his collection right up until the late 1980s.

THE COLLECTION - The Georges F. Keller collection forms the nucleus of the Paolo Morigi collection. Georges Frédéric Keller (1899-1981), who worked closely with Albert C. Barnes (Philadelphia) and the Mellon family, began his career as a modern art dealer in Paris in the 1920s and in 1930 took over the running of the Georges Petit gallery. It is from this period that his collaboration with Dali dates, a collaboration that was to continue until 1963. He became a partner in New York's Bignou Gallery Inc. in 1936 before joining forces with Roland Balay to open the Carstairs Gallery, which he managed from 1949 to 1963.

Georges F. Keller was passionate about African art, acquiring his first sculpture at the age of 19. In 1931, he was appointed as a valuer alongside Charles Ratton and Louis Carré for the sale of the André Breton and Paul Eluard collections (HTMtel Drouot, Paris, 2/3 July 1931), a sale now looked back on as an historic event. African art gradually became his main interest and in 1951 he entrusted his collection of modern art to the Fine Arts Museum of Berne, in order to live surrounded only by his African sculptures. In 1980, the Berne museum exhibited some 300 works collected by Keller under the title Art of Africa and Oceania - an unknown private collection. He invited his young friend Paolo Morigi to catalogue the exhibition.

Han Coray (1880-1974), whose name is linked to many of the works in the Morigi collection, was one of the greatest turn-of-the-century collectors of African art and the first in Switzerland to exhibit these objects as works of art in their own right. In 1917 one of his Zurich galleries hosted the very first exhibition by the Dada movement, which also included a number of items of art nègre. The exhibition caught the interest of the artistic avant-garde in Europe, in particular Hans Arp, Tristan Tzara and Hans Richter.

The Paolo Morigi collection brings together works from two collections acquired in succession by Han Coray. The first, exhibited in 1931 at the Museum für Völkerkunde in Munich, was dispersed in 1940 and the second was the subject of the book entitled Meisterwerke Altafrikanischer Kultur aus der Sammlung Casa Coray published by Han Coray and Paolo Morigi in 1968.

Some of the works gathered together here by Paolo Morigi trace their provenance to collections of Guillaume Apollinaire, Pierre Matisse, Georges de Miré, Charles Ratton and André Fourquet, and bear eloquent witness to the keenness of their eye for the aesthetic quality of Africa's artistic heritage.