Phoenix Ancient Art S.A.

Phoenix Ancient Art's Dazzling Devotionals Invoke the Dawn of History

Phoenix Ancient Art, one of the world's leading dealers in rare and exquisite antiquities from Western civilizations, today announced that its exposition, "Idols," and Mediterranean Cult Objects will be unveiled at its New York City gallery on December 9, 2004, and will remain on view until January 27, 2005. Admittance to the exposition is open to the public during this time from Tuesday through Friday, from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., and on Mondays and Saturdays from 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. The gallery is located at 47 E. 66th Street.

The exhibit is coming to New York after an extremely successful showing in Phoenix Ancient Art's gallery in Geneva, Switzerland, from October 1- 29 of this year. Etienne Dumont noted in the Tribune de Geneve of October 1, 2004, "The kinship with the quest of modern art is striking. That elongated head evokes some Modigliani sculptures; that other one, with the arched eyebrows, is reminiscent of Paul Klee. For that matter, the collectors are often the same people."

The objects--which hail from modern-day Syria, Sardinia, Turkey, Northern Greece, the Balkans, the Cycladic Islands, Egypt and the Iberian Peninsula--span the millennia of prehistory through the Ancient Bronze Age, from 6,000 B.C. to 2,000 B.C. While some pieces are schematic and abstracted, others are anthropomorphic and even wildly voluptuous. They are fashioned from a wide array of materials, including terra cotta, white marble and gold.

"The fact that these works of art can still resonate with us after thousands of years is astounding, especially given the fact that they were created by technologically primitive and often pre-literate societies," said Hicham Aboutaam, Phoenix Ancient Art's co-founder.

"The sculptures and figurines that fascinated our ancestors at the dawn of civilization served some sort of devotional purpose, and they continue to captivate us even today as objects of pure beauty and as testimony to human history. In that sense, they inspire and enrich us spiritually," he added.

In Geneva, visitors were struck by the artistic sophistication of the pieces, many of which are surprisingly current in their aesthetic. Ali Aboutaam, Phoenix Ancient Art, president and co-founder, described the exhibition as consisting of "powerful forms, mainly in stone, created by deeply religious people in search of their god. Starting in the 7th millennium B.C., they unknowingly perhaps created the essence of Western Civilization, which echoes up to modern day art."

Given that the creators of these archaic objects left no written records as to their designated purpose, the term "idol" is used as a scholarly convention. It is widely believed, however, that they were used in funerary, magico-religious and/or fertility rites and rituals.

The objects vary in appearance and construction materials, which correlate with their culture and place of origin. For example, many pieces from modern Turkey and northern Syria use a wide variety of materials and are concerned with the wealth of the harvest, the flocks and the society's women. The female statuettes tend to be rounded, even obese, and are termed "steatopygic," meaning "of large buttocks" and document the importance of women in this society.

Pieces from Northern Greece and the Balkans tend to include objects fashioned from sheet gold and suggest a hierarchical society dominated by princes. Their use of copper suggests contacts with central and eastern Mediterranean cultures. Artifacts from the Iberian Peninsula tend to be anthropomorphic and display incised decoration indicating hair, eyes and undulating lines that some scholars have interpreted to be tattoos.