Quinn’s Auction Galleries – The Pete Cecere Folk Art Collection
Friday, January 26, 2024 – 10:00 A.M.
360 South Washington Street Falls Church, Virginia 22046
www.quinnsauction.com

FALLS CHURCH, VA. — Eccentric? Visionary? An American original? All three descriptions apply to the late Peter “Pete” Cecere, a US Foreign Service officer who discovered the quirky beauty and cultural importance of folk art more than 50 years ago.

“After I die, there’s no more stories,” Cecere saaid in a 2018 documentary about his collection — but the colorful stories that already exist will be told one more time, on January 26 when Quinn’s auctions the first installment of Cecere’s vast holdings.

A career foreign service and cultural affairs officer, Cecere’s first exposure to folk and Outsider art came during his college days in the 1960s when a State Department scholarship enabled him to spend his junior year abroad in Chile. It was there that he first saw and bought unique and fanciful objects made by locals specifically to sell at tourist markets. After college, Cecere joined the US Foreign Service and, armed with a strong command of Spanish, was posted successively to embassies in Ecuador, Bolivia, Uruguay, Mexico and Spain. Throughout his diplomatic journey, he acquired pieces that he found visually appealing and that reflected regional cultures. It was in Bolivia, for example, that he obtained the types of sophisticated textiles for which that nation’s folk artists are so well known. At some point, Cecere’s inner muse emerged and he started to craft his own distinctive pieces, quite skillfully.

Cecere estimated that, in his lifetime, he owned between 20,000 and 30,000 antique and vintage pieces of folk and self-taught art. A 1990 auction, together with his gifts to museums, winnowed down that number, but his renewed vigor for collecting would threaten to close that gap.

His generosity extended to many institutions: the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe, N.M., the Tucson Museum of Art, the American Folk Art Museum in New York and the San Antonio Museum of Art (SAMA), where Cecere was feted in 2013 with a high-profile exhibition titled “Pasion Popular.” The show included 200 objects of Eighteenth Century to modern-day Spanish and Latin American artworks that Cecere had donated to the museum, bringing his lifetime donations to SAMA to 300 works.

There were large and whimsical welded-together scrap-metal animals, folk toys, religious works, macabre art, probably hundreds of masks made by Indigenous peoples for use in dance ceremonies and articulated crank-action pieces such as pecking-chicken whirligigs. In the great room, floating from an artfully painted iridescent sky-ceiling, there were angels, devils and even a flying cucumber-shape “bomb” named “Cuke Nuke.” Novelty items of questionable taste unapologetically adorned the home’s bathrooms. Paintings were displayed on every wall, stairwell and available shelf, including several pop culture-inspired artworks by a Cecere favorite, Chuckie Williams (African American, 1957-2000).

One particular Williams composition in the collection, an acrylic-on-plywood painting, depicts pop star Madonna in glamorous evening attire, with sparkly earrings. The 50-by-32-inch work was exhibited at the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore from October 9, 2010 through September 4, 2011 and will be offered on January 26 with an estimate of $1,5/2,500.

A mermaid body mask, most likely from Guerrero, Mexico, had resided in Cecere’s collection since 1977. Made of painted, carved wood, it was originally purchased for $425 from a vendor at El Bazar Sabado in Mexico City. Its estimate is $600/900.

Cecere thought very highly of his collection of oversize Mexican animal sculptures. Each was fashioned from oil drums or other discarded metal, welded into a shape, then painted. One of several roosters in the “yard-art” menagerie, measuring 100 inches high by 68 inches long, is entered in the sale with a $1,5/2,500 estimate.

A two-saddle stationary jumper horse came from the “B&B Carousell” (sic) at Steeplechase Park, Coney Island, New York. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2016, the B&B was the last operating carousel in Coney Island. Composed of painted wood and metal, the galloping steed carries a $2,5/3,500 estimate. Also equine-related, a Sicilian painted-wood and metal donkey cart with figural and geometric decoration will cross the auction block with a $2/3,000 estimate.

Willie Jinks (1921-2012) was the artist behind a jaunty birdhouse brightly painted in red, green and white. A signed piece, it is one of many affordable works that would appeal both to beginners and advanced collectors ($160/200).

Quinn’s live gallery auction will start at 10 am Eastern time, with absentee and internet live bidding available through LiveAuctioneers or Invaluable. Absentee bidding is also available through HiBid (Quinn’s website). An open preview will be conducted at the auction gallery, 360 South Washington Street, January 22-25. For additional information, www.quinnsauction.com or 703-532-5632.

1 of 3 Mose Tolliver Paintings. This one purchased by Pete in 1992. From an extensive number of paintings by African American Folk artists.
One of many pieces of painted furniture. American, Mexican and Spanish
143: A Steeplechase Park B&B Carousell (sic.) two-saddle stationary jumper horse. Coney Island, Brooklyn, New York.
$2,500-3,500

Artist Chuckie Williams (Louisiana, 1957-2000) Madonna Acrylic on plywood 50”x32”
QUINN’S AUCTION GALLERIES 360 South Washington Street Falls Church, Virginia 22046
www.quinnsauction.com
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