Colima Coahuayana Valley Redware Seated Male Figure

**Originally Listed At $5000**

Pre-Columbian, West Mexico, Colima, Coahuayana Valley type, Protoclassic Period, ca. 100 BCE to 250 CE. A hollow-built redware pottery vessel of a rare form from the Coahuayana Valley depicting a portly man seated upon an integral quadruped stool. The highly burnished figure features deep red and orange hues and presents nude with splayed toes in front of broad feet, delineated legs with bent arms resting atop rounded knees, and a slightly distended abdomen beneath broad shoulders adorned with ritual scarification nodules. The stylized countenance showcases coffee-bean-shaped eyes flanking a prominent nose, gently impressed and raised eyebrows, pierced ears, and a plateaued brow surmounted by the flared vessel rim. Size: 9.5" W x 15.375" H (24.1 cm x 39.1 cm)

Clay figures like this one are the only remains that we have today of a sophisticated and unique culture in West Mexico - they made no above-ground monuments or sculptures, at least that we know of, which is in strong contrast to developments elsewhere in ancient Mesoamerica. Instead, their tombs were their lasting works of art: skeletons arrayed radially with their feet positioned inward, and clay offerings, like this one, placed alongside the walls facing inward, near the skulls. A large effigy like this one most likely would have flanked the entrance to a tomb in a way that archaeologists have interpreted as guarding. Some scholars have interpreted these dynamic sculptures of the living as a strong contrast to the skeletal remains whose space they shared, as if they mediated between the living and the dead.

Cf. Kan, Michael, Clement Meighan, and H.B. Nicholson. "Sculpture of Ancient West Mexico: Nayarit, Jalisco, Colima | A Catalogue of the Proctor Stafford Collection at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art." University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 1989, p. 137, fig. 122 and p. 139, fig. 127.

Provenance: private New York, USA collection, acquired around 1966, ex-Land's Beyond, NY

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#159189
Condition Report: Repairs to left leg below knee and back-right stool leg, with very small chips and light adhesive residue along break lines. Minor abrasions to stool, limbs, body, and head, with fading and small areas of fire-darkening to pigment, and light encrustations within some recessed areas. Great remains of pigment throughout and manganese deposits along upper body.