Lot 32

Nayarit Seated Bichrome Semi-Nude Male & Female

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Lot 32
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Nayarit Seated Bichrome Semi-Nude Male & Female
Nayarit Seated Bichrome Semi-Nude Male & Female
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Nayarit Seated Bichrome Semi-Nude Male & Female

Estimate: $1,900 - $2,750

Starting Bid: $750

(0 Bids)
by Artemis Fine Arts
August 6, 2026 9:00 AM MDT
Live Auction
686 S. Taylor Avenue
Suite 108
Louisville, CO, US 80027

Pre-Columbian, Western Mexico, Nayarit, ca. 100 BCE to 200 CE. A matched pair of hand-modeled polychrome figures captures, with disarming intimacy, the social and ceremonial world of ancient Nayarit. Rendered in the characteristic burnished red slip of the Chinesco or related Nayarit tradition, the two figures sit in easy conversation across two millennia, their gestures arrested mid-moment as if the potter simply forgot to let them move again. The male sits with legs crossed, his body nude save for a suite of adornments that announce his rank with considerable confidence: applied armbands, a beaded necklace, cylindrical earspools, and an elaborate tiered headdress surmounted by a projecting finial. His genitalia are exposed, a deliberate assertion of masculine vitality common in West Mexican figural traditions where nudity carried cosmological rather than merely anatomical weight. He raises his left hand to his mouth, perhaps consuming a ritual substance, while his right hand grips a mace, the weapon of authority, combining in a single pose the twin currencies of the ancient elite: intoxication and force. The contrast in slip color between his lower limbs and upper torso likely reflects differential firing or surface treatment rather than clothing. Size of larger (male): 7.3" W x 11.3" H x 5.3" D (18.5 cm W x 28.7 cm H x 13.5 cm D)

The female is his equal in presence if not in posture. She sits with her left foot folded beneath her and her right foot angled outward, knees raised, body settled into the relaxed authority of someone accustomed to being attended rather than attending. Her left hand cradles a shallow ceramic bowl resting on her knee, the vessel within a vessel, a signature motif of Nayarit female figures associated with feasting, hospitality, and perhaps the preparation of fermented drink. Her right hand rests atop her opposite knee with studied composure. She is semi-nude, breasts exposed, her patterned loincloth rendered with a dotted white design suggesting textile specificity, a detail the Nayarit potters rarely missed. Her adornments are layered and deliberate: armbands, a nose ring, a patterned headband, and what appear to be cascading earrings and multiple necklaces, a costuming vocabulary that signals social standing with the subtlety of a herald's trumpet.

Together, the pair exemplifies the Nayarit tradition of paired funerary figures, placed in shaft tombs as companions for the dead and witnesses to the ceremonial life that defined the living. Their combination of gesture, adornment, nudity, and object-holding situates them within a well-documented class of West Mexican effigy sculpture concerned with ritual feasting, intoxication, and the performance of status, themes that proved durable enough to outlast the cultures that invented them. A collector acquiring this pair acquires not merely two objects but a conversation, frozen, eloquent, and 2,000 years overdue for its close.

Provenance: private Henderson, Nevada, USA collection, by descent; ex-M. McMann, photographer, Los Angeles, California, USA, assembled 1965 to 1995

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Item # 202794

  • Condition: Male figure has been professionally repaired with restoration and repainting over some break lines, while others remain visible. Female has had restoration to nose and armbands with repainting to white areas. Both have expected weathering and surface wear as show. Otherwise, very nice presentations with good remaining detail and scattered earthen and mineral deposits.

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Bid Increments
From: To: Increments:
$0 $299 $25
$300 $999 $50
$1,000 $1,999 $100
$2,000 $4,999 $250
$5,000 $9,999 $500
$10,000 $19,999 $1,000
$20,000 $49,999 $2,500
$50,000 $99,999 $5,000
$100,000 $199,999 $10,000
$200,000 + $20,000