New York, 30th of April 2025 | Colnaghi is excited to announce a joint exhibition with Carlo Bella, Power Figures, opening on the 27th of May and running until the 6th of June. The presentation will feature museum-quality historical African and Native American artworks alongside Old Master Paintings and works from Greco-Roman Antiquity. A public reception will be held Thursday, 29th of May, 6-8 pm, 23 East 67th Street, 4th floor, New York, New York.
Taking its title from the term 'Power Figure,' used in African Art to denote ancestral statues and reliquaries that served as instruments for protecting, healing and administering justice in tribal communities, this exhibition aims to investigate artworks as sites of memory, legacy, and convention, and to create dialogues between artistic traditions that speak to the significance of human representation in the formation and maintenance of cultural tradition.
Carlo Bella will present twenty important pieces of African and Native American Art. A highlight of the exhibition is a large fetish figure from the Songye culture, formerly in the collection of New York art dealer Allan Stone. This imposing nkishi figure features a cavity on the top of the head and one in the abdomen housing medicinal charges that allowed the figure to become a conduit for spiritual interaction and community protection. The carving is covered by a palm oil patina, sprinkled on the figure as it was paraded through the village during ritual processions.
Colnaghi will present a selection of European portrait paintings, as well as Classical Antiquities. Showing in America for the first time in history, the imposing full-length, life-sized Portrait of a Noblewoman by the most important of the Neapolitan Caravaggisti, Giovanni Battista Caracciolo (called Batistello), will be a highlight of the showcase. The portrait depicts a Genoese noblewoman in a sumptuous gown in the Spanish style and an elaborate coiffure. Her unmarried status is subtly indicated lace-bordered handkerchief in her left hand. The Portrait of a Noblewoman is at present the only attributed full-length portrait by the Caracciolo.
Founded in 1760, Colnaghi is among the oldest commercial art galleries in the world, specialising in works of art from antiquity to the modern. Since the late nineteenth century, Colnaghi has been a leading dealership in Old Master paintings and sculpture. As key partners of the greatest collectors of the Gilded Age, including Isabella Stewart Gardener and Henry Clay Frick, Colnaghi sourced masterpieces that to this day define the era's greatest cultural legacies. With galleries in London, New York, Madrid, and Brussels, today Colnaghi deals in rare objects from the Ancient World and the finest Old Master paintings, providing its clients with expert advice and opportunities to cross-collect across centuries and media.