[av_heading heading=’Peter Cecere Latin American folk and outsider art at Quinn’s Jan. 26′ tag=’h1′ style=” subheading_active=” show_icon=” icon=’ue800′ font=’entypo-fontello’ size=” av-desktop-font-size-title=” av-medium-font-size-title=” av-small-font-size-title=” av-mini-font-size-title=” subheading_size=” av-desktop-font-size=” av-medium-font-size=” av-small-font-size=” av-mini-font-size=” icon_size=” av-desktop-font-size-1=” av-medium-font-size-1=” av-small-font-size-1=” av-mini-font-size-1=” color=” custom_font=” subheading_color=” seperator_color=” icon_color=” margin=’,,35px,’ av-desktop-margin=” av-desktop-margin_sync=’true’ av-medium-margin=” av-medium-margin_sync=’true’ av-small-margin=’,,20px,’ av-mini-margin=” av-mini-margin_sync=’true’ headline_padding=” headline_padding_sync=’true’ av-desktop-headline_padding=” av-desktop-headline_padding_sync=’true’ av-medium-headline_padding=” av-medium-headline_padding_sync=’true’ av-small-headline_padding=” av-small-headline_padding_sync=’true’ av-mini-headline_padding=” av-mini-headline_padding_sync=’true’ padding=’10’ av-desktop-padding=” av-medium-padding=” av-small-padding=” av-mini-padding=” icon_padding=’10’ av-desktop-icon_padding=” av-medium-icon_padding=” av-small-icon_padding=” av-mini-icon_padding=” link=” link_target=” title_attr=” id=” custom_class=” template_class=” av_uid=’av-lrdza3wp’ sc_version=’1.0′ admin_preview_bg=”][/av_heading]

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FALLS CHURCH, Va. – Eccentric? Visionary? An American original? All three descriptions apply to the late Peter Cecere, a career foreign service and cultural affairs officer who collected Latin American folk and outsider art for more than 50 years.

It was while posted to the Latin American embassies of Ecuador, Bolivia, Uruguay, Mexico, and latterly Spain that Cecere began to voraciously acquire the art he felt best reflected grass-roots regional cultures. He estimated that, in his lifetime, he owned between 20,000 and 30,000 pieces. A 1990 auction, together with gifts to museums, winnowed down that number, but a renewed vigor for collecting in subsequent decades contributed to the vast holdings that Quinn’s will begin to disperse on Friday, January 26. Bidding on the 405 lots is available via LiveAuctioneers.

Cecere loved the tales that came with each of these objects. “After I die, there’s no more stories,” Cecere said in a 2018 video documentary about his collection – but the colorful narrative that surrounds this idiosyncratic collection is doubtless part of its appeal. At Cecere’s barn-like residence in rural Rappahannock County, Virginia, both the interior and the exterior were crammed with whimsical scrap-metal animals, peasant devotional works and works of macabre art. 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.

Paintings were displayed on every available wall space, including a series of pop-culture-inspired artworks by African American outsider Chuckie Williams (Louisiana, 1957-2000).They include an acrylic-on-plywood painting of pop star Madonna that was exhibited at the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore in 2010-11. It carries one of the sale’s higher estimates at $1,500-$2,500.

A carved and painted wood mermaid body mask, most likely from Guerrero, Mexico and estimated at $600-$900, is a piece that has resided in Cecere’s collection for close to half a century – he bought it for $425 at El Bazar Sabado in Mexico City in 1977 – and he thought particularly highly of his menagerie of oversize Mexican ‘yard art’ animal sculptures. Each fashioned from oil drums or other discarded metal, there are several roosters in the sale, including an 8ft 4in giant estimated at $1,500-$2,500.
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19th-century painted armoire, estimated at $400-$600 as part of Quinn’s sale of the Peter Cecere collection.
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Painted and carved wood Mexican mermaid body mask, most likely from Guerrero, estimated at $600-$900 as part of Quinn’s sale of the Peter Cecere collection.
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Mexican welded and painted metal sculpture of a rooster, estimated at $1,500-$2,500 as part of Quinn’s sale of the Peter Cecere collection.
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Sicilian donkey cart with painted figural and geometric decoration, estimated at $2,000-$3,000 as part of Quinn’s sale of the Peter Cecere collection.
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Jimmie Lee Sudduth, ‘Cotton Wagon with Pickers in the Field,’ estimated at $800-$1,200 as part of Quinn’s sale of the Peter Cecere collection.
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Chuckie Williams, ‘Madonna,’ estimated at $1,500-$2,500 as part of Quinn’s sale of the Peter Cecere collection.
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