Pierre Loeb (1897-1964) Pierre Loeb (1897-1964) By Philippe Bourgoin Along with Alfred Flechtheim (1878-1937) in Germany and Paul Guillaume (1891-1934) in France, Pierre Loeb was one of those dealers who played a fundamental role in the promotion and championing of certain trends in the visual arts who was also interested in tribal art. Pierre and his twin brother Édouard (1897-1984) were born into a bourgeois Jewish Alsatian family, which had moved to Paris following the German annexation of 1871. Their father ran a lace and tulle wholesale business. During the First World War, Pierre and Édouard joined the army and served as artillery officers from 1916 to 1918. Portrait of Pierre Loeb next to sculptures from Papua New Guinea and Lake Sentani (the « Hunchback » on the right), Denise Colomb (1902-2004), 1949. © Archives Galerie Albert Loeb. When they were discharged, Pierre started out as a traveling salesman for the family business, while Édouard, having given up his medical studies, joined the family business and worked there for some twenty years, before starting a career as a paintings broker. A companion of the Surrealists, attracted by literature and poetry and, like his brother, by art, he followed closely in his brother Pierre’s footsteps adventure, and the latter introduced him to his artist friends. In 1953, he opened his own gallery at 53 rue de Rennes, where he worked with the same free spirit as his brother, and exhibited works by Arp, Tinguely, Soto, Kowalski, Cardenas, Wols, Bryen, Goncharova and by Max Ernst, with whom he was close friends. Group portrait around a meal: Maria Elena Vieira da Silva, Jacques Germain, Georges Mathieu, Jean-Paul Riopelle, Zao Wou-Ki and Pierre Loeb in the foreground, 1953. Denise Colomb (1902-2004), © Archives Galerie Albert Loeb. Pierre’s meeting with family friend Daniel Tzanck (1874-1964) was decisive. This dentist, a passionate collector and friend of Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918) and Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968), introduced him to modern art. On his advice, Pierre, aided in his first steps as an aficionado by the poet and art critic Gustave Kahn (1859-1936), started a brokerage business before opening the Galerie Pierre - inaugurated on October 17, 1924 on rue Bonaparte and later moved to the rue des Beaux-Arts in 1927 - with an exhibition devoted to Jules Pascin. It was at this opening that Pierre met Picasso, who had long admired this exceptional artist’s work. It was to be the start of a long and loyal friendship. In June 1925, through the intermediary of Jacques Viot (1898-1973) - a poet who worked at the gallery for a time and had the merit of being one of the first to work with Surrealist painters - the Galerie Pierre exhibited Joan Miró. The opening took place at midnight, with the whole of the Montparnasse crowd in attendance, transforming the exhibition into a “manifesto” for the Surrealist group. In the same year, under the aegis of André Breton (1896-1966) and Robert Desnos (1900-1945), the gallery hosted a group exhibition of works by Man Ray, Jean Arp, Paul Klee, Joan Miró, Max Ernst, Pablo Picasso, André Masson, Pierre Roy and Giorgio de Chirico. Anton Prinner and Pierre Loeb on the first floor of the gallery, towards 1945. On the wall, Le Coq, Picasso (1938) and, on left, house post figure, Met New York, 1979.206.1440. Walter Limot (1902-1984), © Private coll. In 1928, he married Silvia Luzzatto (1905-2000). He was a great lover of painting to be sure, but Pierre Loeb may perhaps have been even more attracted to African art and especially to Oceanic art. The collection of Pacific art he built up - and sometimes traded in - was one of the most important of its time. At his home or in his second floor gallery, playing the role of an influencer who was a pioneer of his time, he gathered together his many artist and collector friends, and provided them with the opportunity to familiarize themselves with these arts. In 1929, he financed Viot’s second trip to explore the Lake Sentani region of what was then Dutch New Guinea, whose sculptures were highly prized by Surrealist artists at the time. Pierre signed a contract with Viot, stipulating that he would purchase objects that would be shipped to him. Viot went on to put together a truly spectacular collection of objects from Lake Sentani, including at least eighteen figurative sculptures that the people had thrown into the lake to save them from the destruction ordered by the missionaries, a number of korwar objects from Geelvinck Bay, and a substantial ensemble of paintings on beaten bark known as maro from Humboldt Bay. Pierre kept the famous figure known as the “Hunchback”, as well as the “Mother and Child” (private collection and MET, New York, 1979.206.1440, visible in photographs taken by Loeb's sister Denise Collomb (1902-2004) and photographer Walter Limot (1902-1984)) for the rest of his life. House Post Figure, XIXe Century, Indonesia, New Guinea, Lake Sentani. Wood. H.: 91,8 cm. © The Michael C. Rockefeller Memorial Collection, Bequest of Nelson A. Rockefeller, 1979, MET, New York. 1979.206.1440. The admirable double-figure sculpture, which Viot christened “Le Lys”, was unveiled to the Parisian public at the Pierre Colle gallery in January 1933. Later that same year, the piece was shown at the home of Louis Carré (1897-1977) at the Villa Guibert in an exhibition called Sculptures et objets d’Afrique Noire, Amérique ancienne, Polynésie et Mélanésie produced by Pierre Loeb and Charles Ratton (1895-1986). Again that same year, Man Ray (1890-1976) took the sculpture to his studio on rue Campagne Première to photograph it from a variety of angles. The object’s sojourn in Paris ended with its acquisition by the artist Jacob Epstein (1880-1959), then living in London: “It is now in a fine collection of African and Oceanic art, continuing among other fetishes its intense, eternal, secret life - that mysterious life that the artists of our time have tried to capture...” (P. Loeb, Voyage à travers la peinture, Paris, 1945, p. 110; now exhibited at the National Gallery of Australia, NGA 74.214). Ancestor double figure “Le Lys”. Wood. H.: 177,2 cm. Collected by Jacques Viot ; Ex-coll. Pierre Loeb, Jacob Einstein, Gustave & Franyo Schindler, Gaston de Havenon. © NGA, National Gallery of Australia, purchased 1974. Accession Number: 74.214. A group of the maro beaten bark tapa cloths were presented to the public for the first time at the Galerie de la Renaissance on rue Royale in Paris in 1930 as part of a show devoted exclusively to Oceanic art. With 180 objects, it was the first encyclopedic exhibition dedicated to the Pacific. Pierre and his brother Édouard were among the lenders to this event. The pieces in the show were noticed and admired by François Poncetton (1875-1950), curator at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, and gallery owner André Portier (1886-1963), and they reproduced eleven of them in their Décoration océanienne folio (A. Calavas, Paris, no date [1931], pl. 19 to 28). 1930 is remembered as a very important year, as it was also the date for the event organized by Tristan Tzara (1896-1963), Pierre Loeb and Ratton at the Galerie du Théâtre Pigalle. This show offered a complete panorama of the African and Pacific arts available at the time, with a particular emphasis on Oceanic art, and the discovery of an important group of exceptional objects from Papua New Guinea. In late 1929 or early 1930, the young Swiss dealer and collector Kurt Mettler (1905-1930), who had developed an interest in primitive art through his contacts with Flechtheim and Carl Einstein (1885-1940), presented a number of pieces from Easter Island in his new gallery at 174 rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré in Paris. Pierre was struck by two works: “I noticed a display case filled with Easter Island fetishes [...]. Among them were two exceptional objects: the first was an almost life-size head; two small, atrophied arms protruded stiffly on either side from the place where the ears usually are. [...] The second object was a forearm with its hand [...] of striking realism...” (P. Loeb, Voyage à travers la peinture, pp. 29-30). Collection made by Dr Walter Knoche en 1911. In the center, the bodyless head with two arms. J. Macmillan Brown (1846-1935), The Riddle of the Pacific, T. F. Unwin Ltd, London, 1924, face p. 142) Pierre acquired these two objects - probably from Flechtheim - at this time, as they were exhibited in February at the Galerie du Théâtre Pigalle under his name. The bodiless head with two arms, collected by Dr. Walter Knoche in 1911 (J. Macmillan Brown (1846-1935), The Riddle of the Pacific, T. F. Unwin Ltd, London, 1924, opposite p. 142), was acquired by Helena Rubinstein in 1938. Picasso, on a visit to the Galerie Pierre, was awestruck by the staff depicting a human arm, and Pierre, despite his desire to keep it, gave it to him as a gift. Picasso made a study of it (private collection, December 12, 1945). This hand also appears in a photograph by Brassaï (1899-1984) of Picasso’s sculpture Tête de taureau (Bull’s Head) and the Easter Island staff (1942), and Picasso used it as a found object to form the left arm of Femme en robe longue (Woman in a Long Dress) (1943), a life-size figure built around a mannequin. This sculpture has has now been dismantled and a bronze has been made of it. Picasso Pablo (dit), Ruiz Picasso Pablo (1881-1973), « Études d’après une main en bois de l’île de Pâques », ink on paper, 39 x 50 cm, signed and dated Picasso 12 Décembre 45. © Private coll., Uppsala Auctions Kammare, May 16, 2024. Brassaï (dit), Halasz Gyula (1899-1984), Picasso Pablo (dit), Ruiz Picasso Pablo (1881-1973), sculptures en guidon et selle de vélo "Tête de taureau" (1942) avec le bras de l’île de Pâques dans l'atelier des Grands-Augustins, Paris, 1943. Épreuve gélatino-argentique. © Paris, musée national Picasso. In November 1934, Pierre Loeb and Charles Ratton convinced Pierre Matisse (1900-1989) to organize an exhibition of Oceanic art at his New York gallery, featuring eight maro (seen in three photos in the gallery’s archives at The Morgan Library & Museum, New York). In 1936, Loeb participated in the Exposition Surréaliste exhibition at Ratton’s gallery, with the loan of a mask from New Britain. Helena Rubinstein (1872-1965) was among the first major connoisseurs to discover Viot’s Lake Sentani objects and she acquired two figures (now in the Gordon Sze and Musée Barbier-Mueller Genève (Inv. 4051) collections). In 1932, John (1904-1973) and Dominique de Menil (1908-1997) bought two maro, which were among the first objects in the valuable collection now housed in Houston (CA 3204 and CA 3202). They subsequently also acquired three sculptures (X 0101, X 0102 and V 708) in 1957 and 1960. Figure, Lake Sentani, Irian Jaya, Indonesia, New Guinea, Papua Province (Irian Jaya). XIXe Century. Wood. H.: 120,7 cm. Collected by Jacques Viot, 1929. Ex-coll. Pierre Loeb ; Helena Rubinstein. © Coll. Gordon Sze MD It was in 1949 that the famous London collectors Lisa (1912-2014) and Robert Sainsbury (1906-2000) began collecting Giacometti’s works, after having met him through Pierre. It was also through Pierre, in 1939 and 1954, that they made their first Oceanic acquisitions (now housed in the Sainsbury Centre at the University of East Anglia, Norwich) with a trophy head from the Papuan Gulf (UEA 153), a Iatmul flute stopper (UEA 160), a Lake Sentani house post (UEA 156), and a Maori whalebone wahaika (U EA 185). They also purchased a We mask from Côte d'Ivoire (UEA 211). The flute stopper (UEA 158) and the Biwat male figure (UEA 159), as well as the seated Sepik figure (UEA 157), can be seen atop a chest of drawers in two of the photographs taken by Loeb’s sister, Denise Collomb (1902-2004), in 1949. Male figure, Biwat, Papua New Guinea. Wood. H.: 35,8 cm. XIXe century. © Acquired by the Sainsbury Family in 1954 from Pierre Loeb. Donated by Robert and Lisa Sainsbury, the Sainsbury Centre, University of East Anglia, 1973. UEA 159. When the Second World War (1939-1945) broke out, Pierre was mobilized as a reserve artillery lieutenant. After his discharge and the signing of the armistice with Germany on June 22, 1940, the first Vichy laws and decrees persecuting the Jews in France began to come into force. As early as March 1941, new discriminatory laws were enacted, particularly for merchants, including Jewish art dealers, whose galleries were “aryanized”. Anxious to protect his wife Sylvia, and his children Florence and Albert, he decided to leave France and, on May 16, 1941, sold his gallery to Georges Aubry (1885-1968), with whom he had worked before the war. He was unable to obtain visas for the United States, so the family boarded the SS Nyassa, bound for Havana, where they arrived, on February 25, 1942. In Cuba, Loeb found painter Wifredo Lam, whom he had met through Picasso and exhibited in his gallery in Paris in 1939. In Havana, Lam introduced him to Cuban intellectuals, including the writer Alejo Carpentier (1904-1980). Loeb gave lectures on painting and wrote Voyages à travers la peinture, a collection of memoirs and reflections on art, for which Lam designed the cover and which was published by Bordas in 1946. Loeb left Cuba on March 9, 1945, via Martinique, where he met Breton and became friends with Aimé Césaire (1913-2008). From there, he returned to France in June 1945. One of his first visits was to Picasso, who helped him take back his gallery, now occupied by his colleague Aubry, who was reluctant to honor the moral contract binding him to restitute it to Pierre. Seated Figure, Lower Sepik River, Papua New Guinea. XIXe Century. Wood. H.: 94,6 cm. © Acquired by the Sainsbury Family in 1954 from Pierre Loeb. Donated by Robert and Lisa Sainsbury, the Sainsbury Centre, University of East Anglia, 1973. UEA 157. With the assistance in its final years of Nane Stern (1929-1998), Loeb turned the gallery into one of the leading venues for the avant-garde, exhibiting painters who had just arrived in Paris, such as Zao Wou-Ki, Jean-Paul Riopelle, Vieira da Silva, Georges Mathieu, Lanskoy, Wolfgang Paalen, Henri Michaux and Camille Bryen, and he organized one of the first exhibitions of the Cobra group, bringing to light the work of young painters like Bernard Dufour, Constantin Macris, Dodeigne and Paul Kallos. Pierre Loeb also supported Antonin Artaud (1896-1948) and was the first to promote his work by exhibiting it in 1946 and 1947. In 1948, the Surrealists organized the Océanie exhibition at the Galerie Andrée Olive. The catalog, which lists 116 objects with the Pierre Loeb, André Breton, and Charles Ratton provenances, among others, also includes a foreword and five previously unpublished poems by Breton called Korwar, Uli, Dukduk, Tiki and Rano Raraku. A few years later, Pierre participated in sponsoring another major collecting expedition. This was the Mission ethnographique en pays Dogon led by François di Dio (1921-2005), which he financed together with collector and gallery owner René Rasmussen (1911-1979). Di Dio, a writer, publisher and adventurer and friend of the Surrealists, travelled to Mali from February to April 1956, and brought around a hundred Dogon and Bambara objects back to Europe with him. In the course of his trip, di Dio recorded and filmed the unique funeral of the great French ethnologist Marcel Griaule (1898-1956). Although ultimately buried in France, Griaule was given a traditional funeral by the Dogon. Having now separated from his wife Silvia Luzzato, Pierre remarried Hungarian painter Agathe Vaïto (1928-1973) in 1957. Still on the subject of Oceania, Pierre Loeb, Christian Zervos (1889-1970), Tristan Tzara (1896-1963) and Marcel Évrard (1920-2009) wrote the catalog that accompanied the Sculpture monumentale de Nouvelle Guinée et des Nouvelles Hébrides exhibition, shown at the Galerie Jeanne Bucher in 1961. At this show, large wooden sculptures from the Sepik were displayed in the various gallery spaces alongside tree fern root roof ornaments from the New Hebrides, and Pierre agreed to lend his Lake Sentani “The Hunchback” figure and a Kanigara figure from the Middle Sepik River region to the exhibition as well. This presentation drew the attention of a wide audience that was unaccustomed to seeing works like this in this kind of gallery setting. Bram Hammacher (1897-2002), director of the Kröller-Müller Museum (Otterlo) at the time, acquired a large Ambrym drum (KM 117.715), and Robert Goldwater (1907-1973), the first director of New York’s Museum of Primitive Art, chose a house post (MET, New York, 1979.206.1672). From October 25 to November 25, 1962, without producing an invitation card for it, Pierre put on an exhibition of African and Oceanic objects from his personal collection: “For a long time, I had lived surrounded by Fang sculptures, overmodeled and decorated skulls, masks from the Ivory Coast, tree ferns from the New Hebrides, sculpted floats from Papua, and emaciated fetishes from Easter Island. Attracted by the sculptural beauty of some of these works, and by the invention and strange mystery of others, I sometimes liked to touch this material and concrete magic with the utmost kind of cat-like caution” (P. Loeb, Havana, August 4 1942). In February 1964, knowing he was seriously ill, Loeb closed his gallery. He died in Paris on May 6. Pierre Loeb was among those who constantly “thought” art, and was completely convinced of its spiritual and emancipating powers. He was one of the great gallery owners of his generation, both in terms of the impressive number of artists he encouraged by exhibiting them and by supporting them with constant purchases. In addition to those already mentioned, the many artists he exhibited include Victor Brauner and Balthus, whose first exhibitions Loeb organized in 1934, Prinner, Matisse, Raoul Dufy, Braque, Derain, Utrillo, Rouault, Soutine, as well as Hélion, Calder, Marie Laurencin, Magnelli, Hartung, Gromaire, Marcoussis, and sculptor Henri Laurens. Although he was a great lover of painting to be sure, his loyalty was ultimately far greater to certain cult objects than to the finest canvases, and he was more sensitive to the life attached to such works than he was to their formal beauty. In 1961, referring to African and Oceanic peoples, he wrote: “[...] the greatest of our artists, with Picasso leading the charge, have called on them to revitalize ‘civilized’ art, which has foundered. And it may yet be that it will be through them that we will rediscover that imperative need to create without which, as we know, there can be no art, and no intimate correspondence between man and the mysteries that surround and intrigue him (from Sculpture monumentale de Nouvelle Guinée et des Nouvelles Hébrides, ed. Jeanne Bucher).
