AN OLMEC STONE DWARF MEXICO, MIDDLE PRECLASSIC PERIOD (C. 900-600 B.C.) |

with slender crouching body and both hands clutching the fleshy cheeks with fingers outspread, the characteristic large head uplifted and staring anxiously upward with one opened eye, the right side blinded, in porphyritic tuff with yellow-grey pigment in the recessed eye

Collection of Rea Goodman, New York, acquired prior to 1969.
Sotheby's New York, 24th November 1997, lot 82.
An American east coast private collection.
Sotheby's New York, 15th May 2015, lot 28.

Julie Jones, Pre-Columbian Art in New York: Selections from Private Collections, The Museum of Primitive Art, New York, 1969, fig. 13.

This evocative figure belongs to a small group of approximately thirty stone statues depicting dwarfs, some like this example, in an animated state of anxiety clutching their faces. This figure appears to have one blinded eye as he looks skyward. Covarrubias first related Olmec dwarfs with the chaneque trickster spirits of modern Veracruz folklore who are thought to bring rain and fertility. Lake Catemaco in Veracruz is a centre for such legends. These mischievous creatures had supernatural powers, able to communicate with the spirits and travel between earth and other realms. Dwarf figures appear in various sites throughout the Olmec heartland, such as supports on the stone throne Portero Nuevo Monument 2 and a stone altar at San Lorenzo (Carolyn E. Tate, 'Art in Olmec Culture', Michael D. Coe, The Olmec World: Ritual and Rulership, Princeton, 1995, p. 61). In the later Maya era, dwarfs were important members of royal courts.

For related works see Michael D. Coe, op.cit., p. 217, figs 112 and 113, the former in The Metropolitan Museum of Art; and Elizabeth P. Benson and Beatriz de la Fuente, Olmec Art of Ancient Mexico, Washington D.C., 1996, p. 123, fig. 2, and pp. 224-225, figs 63a-64.