Vintage Guna Mola Folk Art Panel With Abstract Radiating Pattern & Spirit

Details

Description

Medium: Cotton textile; reverse appliqué, appliqué, and hand embroidery
Culture: Guna (Kuna), Guna Yala, Panama
Date: Circa mid-20th century
Dimensions: … Read more Medium: Cotton textile; reverse appliqué, appliqué, and hand embroidery
Culture: Guna (Kuna), Guna Yala, Panama
Date: Circa mid-20th century
Dimensions: 13.5" x 17.3"
Provenance: Ann Parker and Avon Neal Collection
Condition: Good; slight fading and wear consistent with age

Vintage Guna mola panel depicting a floating spirit or mask with a radiating pattern. Worked in three layers utilizing reverse appliqué, appliqué, and hand embroidery. The background is a pale orange. The reverse is as good as the front in our opinion. In good condition with slight fading and wear consistent with age.

Collector Biography: Ann Parker and Avon Neal

Ann Parker (British, b. 1934) and Avon Neal (American, 1922–2003) were artists, authors, and collectors whose work contributed to the appreciation of folk art traditions in the Americas. The couple began their careers creating gravestone rubbings in New England during the early 1960s, documenting 17th- and 18th-century carved imagery before many stones were lost to age and development. Their rubbings, executed on Japanese rice paper with silk pads and black ink, are held in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the American Folk Art Museum.

Parker and Neal's most enduring contribution to the field came through their study and collection of Guna molas. Beginning in 1965, they made numerous trips to the San Blas Islands (Guna Yala) of Panama, assembling a collection of that was beyond just the tourist pieces. Their research culminated in the publication of Molas: Folk Art of the Cuna Indians, which remains one of the most significant studies of the tradition ever produced. The couple was particularly drawn to "story-telling" molas, works that incorporated imagery from Western culture, including magazine advertisements, billboards, and comic books, as well as spiritual compositions depicting Guna cosmology and syncretic religious themes.

Molas from their collection are held in institutional collections including the Textile Museum at George Washington University, which received works jointly from Parker, Neal, and Frederick C. Seibold, Jr. See less