Today's auction is devoted to Eskimo, Pueblo and Haïda masks from the collection of Robert Lebel (1901-1986), biographer and friend of Marcel Duchamp's, novelist, essayist and expert in old masters. Most of them have been featured in famous exhibitions such as: Le Masque, Musée Guimet, Paris, 1959-1960; Primitivism in 20th Century Art, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1984; André Breton, La beauté convulsive, Misée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris, 1991.

Walking down 3rd Avenue in New York City in the 1940's, Max Ernst came upon Julius Carlebach's shop, later called by Claude Levi-Strauss "Ali Baba's cavern". To his great surprise, Ernst discovered superb eskimo masks, from the Heye Foundation, which reminded him of the ones he had admired in 1936, at the Paris Charles Ratton gallery, in the Surrealist Exhibition of Objects. The day after his find, he came back with his friends - André Breton, Claude Levi-Strauss, Matta, Enrico Donati, Georges Duthuit, Isabelle Waldberg and Robert Lebel. Fascinated, they set out to acquire a large group of these masks. This is how Eskimo art found it's way into prestigious collections of the surrealistic circle.