Welcome to Mystery & Mastery
Searching for the history, context, and biography of my newly acquired painting.
What is this?
It’s a research project that will be revealed over a series of posts. I’m not a professional writer, art-collector, or artist. I’m just curious and love a good mystery.
The idea of six degrees of separation is one that I’m applying to this research project, but from the perspective of inspiration and context. How far removed is the history of a small kingdom in the Ivory Coast from a small art gallery in Mt. Kisco, New York? I’ll delve deep into each tangent that catches my fancy.
The Painting
I found it on Auction Ninja. I like to peruse local, estate sale auctions for items I can pick up within a few miles of my house. But this time, I decided to allow my, usually strictly filtered, search to include the entire U.S.. I wanted to find a painting to gift myself for my birthday.
A while ago, I learned about Herb and Dorothy Vogel, the frugal New York art collectors who amassed one of the most impressive collections in the world on Herb’s salary as a postal worker (which peaked at $23,000/yr.) I found their story inspiring and realized that my lifelong desire to be an art collector shouldn’t be hindered by my small, art collecting budget. After all, my mother had found my first true, fine art prints by Sergio Gonzalez-Tornero at an Arc Thrift Store over ten years ago. For my 47th birthday, I decided it was time to start collecting, officially.
When I saw the painting by Georges Ebrin Adingra it immediately spoke to me. I must pause here to say, I don’t know much about art. Right now, collecting is just about what I like and what speaks to my soul on an initial viewing. Maybe someday, I’ll care more about pedigree and documentation. This time, the initial bid was five dollars and I won the painting for twenty-three. Not a bad start to my “official” collecting career.
The painting came wrapped and shipped from Gaynor’s Fine Consignments in Chatham, Massachusetts to Denver, Colorado. It measures 24 x 30 inches and has no documentation, apart from an old artist bio taped to the back from the long-shuttered Pinchpenny Gallery in Mt. Kisco, New York.
Right now, I’ll pause to say, pardon me if I share too many details as I go down this rabbit hole researching my painting and the artist behind it. I see this as a fun research project (I once self-assigned a biographical research paper on Leo Tolstoy as a precocious (obnoxious?) teenager because I really loved writing them!) and will be delving into each “clue” I find.
The Artist
There isn’t much that can be gleaned about Georges Ebrin Adringa’s life (1933?-2005) from the internet. Although his work has been featured in many collections, he didn’t become as notorious as his peers. As I started to pick through the few crumbs of info I could find about him online, I found a few threads to pull. The first thread was that he was allegedly (I can find no source information listed in the online biographies) a prince and heir to the throne of the now dissolved Kingdom of Sanwi. The artist bio taped to my painting tells a different story than those I’ve found online, even down to a different birth year, but I’ve been able to piece together a small portrait of the artist which will be revealed in an upcoming post. For now, please enjoy six minutes of his paintings to whet your Adingra appetite.
The Mystery
At the beginning of this project, my goal was very small: find out a little bit about the artist behind the new (old) painting hanging on my living room wall. But, a few hours into online research, I found a mystery that piqued my interest. This mystery involves defrauding a government, embezzling diamonds (of course,) an accidental death in Dubai, a missing collection of African art, and a German business magnate. I’m looking forward to seeing where this leads me.
What comes next:
Most importantly, I want to learn as much about Mr. Adingra as possible. But to do that, I think I’ll need to expand upon the context of his life and times. I’m not going to stop myself from following each tangent to its logical end, even if I can’t see how it relates to the painting or Georges (we’re on a first name basis now.) Past, present (1978) and future surrounding this painting will be pulled together to create a mosaic of information that I hope will be of interest. And, hopefully, I’ll get to solve a little mystery along the way.
This stack is free for now. I don’t want to commit to producing articles in a timely manner, so I don’t want you to commit your hard-won earnings.