Reuben Ugbine's Mother and Child is the only sculptural work in the collection, and its presence introduces a material and formal dimension that the paintings alone could not provide. The wood carving, standing at 95 x 40 x 30 cm, draws on a West African tradition of figurative wood sculpture that is among the most significant contributions of the continent to world art history and that profoundly influenced the development of European modernism in the early twentieth century, particularly in the work of Picasso, Brancusi, and the German Expressionists. Ugbine works within this tradition with formal confidence, achieving in this relatively modest scale a sense of mass and weight that larger works do not always possess. The two forms of mother and child are so fully intertwined as to approach a single organic shape, the boundary between the two figures dissolving in a formal gesture that is also a statement about the nature of the maternal bond. The certificate of authenticity from Alexis Galleries is held on file.