Intimate Conversations

More than 130 works from the collection assembled by Drs Nicole and John Dintenfass over fifty years.

The Dintenfass Collection serves as a model and a source of inspiration for new and seasoned collectors alike. A different slant on collecting which is not actually just buying from dealers. A lavishly illustrated book that traces the origin of a collector's interest in African art and analyses the psychological aspects driving the passions for collecting.

The Nicole and John Dintenfass Collection is well known and based on aesthetics, and the works have been reproduced in many publications. They have collected with passion, diligence, depth and rigor monumental sculptures and wooden miniatures, from most regions of Africa. Focusing on pieces of the highest artistic quality, this book shares the collectors' personal point of view about collecting and offers to readers anecdotes that provide an additional insight into this world to future and present collectors in their search for African art. Collecting is a passion that often leads to intimate inner conversations or to emotional experiences with the objects themselves. Moreover many collectors share their unique experience of joy and appreciation with twentieth-century artists who also collected African art and who generously imparted advice, suggestions and support in responding to the collectors' enthusiasm.

Thanks to the multiple beautiful and sensitive photographs of each object, the viewer has a chance to form an intimate conversation that creates a connection with those African master carvers that have strongly influenced modern realism, cubism and expressionism.

220 colour images

About the Authors

John Dintenfass is vettor for African art exhibitions, and a long-time collector who has lectured on the aesthetics of African art and the psychology of collecting. He is assistant professor of psychiatry at Mt. Sinai Hospital, school of Medicine in New York. Nicole Dintenfass is a doctor of psychology and past director of training at the Karen Horney Institute. She is on the Faculty of the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine.

Heinrich Schweizer was head of African and Oceanic Art at Sotheby's, where he has been credited with introducing new cataloguing standards for African art.

Berenice Geoffroy-Schneiter trained as an art historian at the Ecole du Louvre and studied ancient Greek at the Sorbonne. She is a journalist and an art critic. She has published several books on tribal arts and personal adornment and co-curated the Paris exhibition Voyage dans ma tete, la collection de coiffes d'Antoine de Galbert (2010).