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Lot 14A
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Chupicuaro Pottery Figures - Standing Forms, Group of Three
Chupicuaro Pottery Figures - Standing Forms, Group of Three
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Pre-Columbian, Mexico, Chupicuaro, ca. 400–100 BCE. A trio of hand-modeled terracotta figures from the Chupicuaro heartland of west-central Mexico, each frontal and rooted on splayed, columnar legs. The largest stands robust and matronly, arms folded across a swelling torso, the wide hips and abbreviated skirt suggesting an emphasis on fertility, the broad face framed by an elaborate coiffure rendered in incised and applied clay. A slender companion bears the classic angular profile of the type, pellet ornaments ringing the head and breast and traces of pigment at the throat. The smallest, terracotta-red and compact, peers out with applied coffee-bean eyes and banded ankles. Built by the coil-and-pellet technique and finished by hand, such figurines accompanied burials and likely embodied ancestral or fertility concerns within a vanished domestic ritual life. Size of largest: 2" W x 5.7" H (5.1 cm W x 14.5 cm H).

The Chupicuaro culture flourished in the Lerma River basin of Guanajuato and Michoacan during the Late Preclassic, and its cemeteries yielded prolific quantities of solid hand-built figurines. Two stylistic hallmarks recur here: the "pretty lady" type, with slit "coffee-bean" eyes formed by a single applied fillet pierced or incised once, and the broad-hipped standing female emphasizing fecundity. Pellet jewelry, banded limbs, and red or cream slip with bituminous black accents are diagnostic of the tradition. Excavated overwhelmingly from funerary contexts, these figures are thought to have served the dead as companions or as agents of regeneration, a recurring preoccupation across the agrarian societies of the central Mexican Preclassic.

Provenance: private Colorado, USA collection; With Stand: ex-private Los Angeles, California, USA collection; ex-major gallery, Beverly Hills, California, USA, primarily acquired between 1985 and 2005

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Item # 202804

  • Condition: Good. Largest has been repaired from two pieces with break line visible and mid-size has had proper right foot reattached with adhesive along break line. Most petite is intact. All have expected surface wear, but, otherwise, present nicely with good remaining detail and pigments. Scattered earthen deposits throughout.

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by Artemis Fine Arts
June 25, 2026 9:00 AM MDT
686 S. Taylor Avenue
Suite 108
Louisville, CO, US 80027

Artemis Fine Arts

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