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THROCKMORTON FINE ART

145 East 57th Street, 3rd Floor | (212) 223-1059 | throckmorton-nyc.com

Spencer Throckmorton founded Throckmorton Fine Art in 1980 and maintains a high profile gallery in New York City’s East 57th Street art district that he has become one of the foremost sources for important Latin American Contemporary and Vintage Photography, as well as for antique Pre-Columbian artworks, and Chinese Jade and Antiquities. Throckmorton is unique in its approach to dealing in several categories and for supporting a vigorous exhibition and publishing program for each specialty. Spencer Throckmorton and his colleagues most value the relationships they have built not just with their clients but with the artists and museum officials and scholars whose fascination with the subjects they feature matches theirs. They strive daily to create an environment in which the focus is on building appreciation for the Arts of the Americas from Pre-Columbian times to the present. They are known for devoting the time and resources needed to properly position an artist, or a collection of works, in the best light. Few gallerists are as willing to work over long periods of time with artists as they develop their talents and points of distinction and to actively seek out clients who will educate their eye and build an appreciation for the artist and the medium. As a result of this philosophy, Spencer Throckmorton has built a major collection of vintage photographs of Frida Kahlo, acquired an important group of rare vintage photographs by Tina Modotti and Edward Weston from their Mexican years, and has a large inventory of Mexican art from the Modernist period as well as contemporary Latin American photo-based art. The gallery often is asked to loan artworks to museums for special exhibitions. It is no accident that Throckmorton works simultaneously in promoting contemporary Latin American photography, Pre-Columbian art and Chinese Jades and Antiquities.

COSMIC RECKONINGS: September 17th - November 14th, 2020

What do stargazers, acrobats, and flying shamans have in common? A list to which we might also add ballplayers?

At some level they all assumed cosmic significance among the Pre-Columbian peoples of Mesoamerica who imagined and fashioned them into works of art. Beginning with the early Olmec, art functioned as the symbolic means by which Formative period cultures represented their ritual and spiritual connections with the natural and supernatural worlds. Much of this ritual activity focused on subsistence, in which maize emerged as the key player, with rulers and shamans acting as mediators with ancestors and supernatural forces. These figure types all seem to have originated with the Olmec in the Pre-Classic–the period from which most of the works in the show derive–but with the possible exception of stargazers all of them seem to have persisted into the Classic and probably Post-Classic periods. Though we may never understand their full ritual contexts, the figure types in the exhibition provide valuable insight into both the systems of thought among Pre-Columbian cultures in Mesoamerica and a partial roadmap to their evolution.

This exhibition is very much driven by the pandemic of the novel coronavirus, COVID19, which shuddered New York for months. As the City slowly returns to life, it seems poignant to offer an exhibit of compelling Pre-Columbian objects that remind us all of the long human history of confronting calamities, of getting right with the world and the forces that control it. In ancient times there were surely diseases, droughts, floods, earthquakes, volcanos, COSMIC RECKONINGS Stargazers, Acrobats and Flying Shamans From Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica September 17th – November 14th, 2020 Show Catalogue Available Image: Mezcala, Seated Stargazer, Late Formative Period, 500 BCE - 100 CE, Black Serpentine, H: 7 in. W: 4 ½ in. D: 5 in. (Ex. Collection, Oliver Hoare, London, UK) Press Release THROCKMORTON FINE ART 145 East 57th Street, 3rd Floor, NY, NY 10022 Tel. 212. 223. 1059 Fax. 212. 223. 1937 Info@throckmorton-nyc.com www.throckmorton-nyc.com famines, and warfare. Indeed, the great Maya and Teotihuacan civilizations collapsed from one or more such calamities. But human life continues. In some small way the pieces in the exhibition are intended to provide hope and inspiration. A personal way of finding and steering a course. A Cosmic Reckoning.