The Monumental and Highly Important ‘Kienzle’ Stucco Statue of Buddha Gandhara

This is the last video we do about this auction and it's about this magnificent Stukobudo from Gandhara. It's here in our catalog. So essentially it was recovered in Afghanistan in the year 1994 when the Taliban were advancing. After 1979 when the Russians occupied Afghanistan and overthrew the democracy and the old kingdom of Afghanistan, the Taliban, the word essentially means students, so they're the students of Islam, they took over power. Their belief, it is not for mankind to reproduce icons of deities because there's only one god and that is Allah and you should not reproduce such images. And that is quite unfortunate because they moved on and destroyed more than 95 percent of the buddhist heritage of Gandhara and the Kushan empire and subsequent empires and much of other areas from Bamiyan all the way to Hadar and other places of ancient buddhist heritage. The most important of course is Bamiyan. Bamiyan is an important world cultural heritage site that exists. There are several buddhas that have sizes up to 55 meters, 39 meters, 36 meters and they were essentially charged with dynamite and exploded and destroyed in front of the world press. They have never been restored to this day because the Taliban are still in charge and it is in that circumstances that a noted German collector who traveled to Afghanistan in the 1960s and 1970s and collected a lot of pieces there during the better days and formed some connections both in Pakistan and in Afghanistan with dealers, got a call in early 1994 from an old dealer friend who told him that there is this buddha, a stuka buddha in a grotto that's been there for 1500 years plus which they want to remove because they're afraid the Taliban are going to destroy it. That was the essence of the communication. The collector is Dr. Kienzle, a very well-known doctor at the hospital of Garmisch-Martin-Kirche in Germany. Dr. Horst Kienzle and his siblings formed a very large collection of ancient buddhist art that was sold in several parts to the auction houses Nagel in Germany and Zacke ourselves here in Austria. Several thousand pieces that built the foundation of the Asian Art Museum in Germany which was founded by Peter Hart. When Dr. Kienzle got this car he was asked if he could send money so that it could be afforded to cut the buddha into three segments, pack him, put him on a trolley and move him out of Afghanistan and pay the corresponding bribes so that it could pass the borders which were already closed at that time literally at night, bring it to Pakistan and from there ship it to Germany and this is what happened. That story Dr. Kienzle kept for himself. He had the piece brought to his house in the forest in the south of Germany. A few months after it was delivered he had a noted restorer from the museum in Peshawar come to his place and put the piece back in its original shape. There was a workshop, a little hut hidden in the forest where the piece was reassembled. A few weeks after completion the plan was to move it where the rest of the Kienzle collection was stored but that never happened because Dr. Kienzle had a heavy accident and was paralyzed or partly paralyzed after. From hospital he never returned to his house. He stayed in a home for the elderly and eventually bequeathed his whole collection which he previously inherited from his siblings to Peter Hart. It was all moved to the museum in Baden-Württemberg and displayed there. Just two weeks before the opening of the museum in 2015 we had Dr. Kienzle who called Peter Hart and told him there is still one piece, actually two pieces left in his house and that he should go there and have a look at that. So Peter Hart and his son Tobias they went there, that is now 12 years ago. They discovered this Buddha sitting in the hut in the forest that was completely overgrown. They had to use electric saws to cut their way through this jungle that had emerged in the past 20 years to even get access to the hut and then eventually they found the Buddha in another large bronze there which we already sold in the second part of the Peter Hart sale. It was a very important large bronze. It sold for I think 160,000 euros if I remember correctly. This is the second one they found. They then talked to Dr. Kienzle who was at that time I think 93 or 94 years old already and he told them the whole story and they had a protocol made and that protocol is with us now. And so this tells the story how the piece came to Germany 32 years ago. We put a symbolic price on it which is 150,000 euros, 300,000 is the estimate. I think it's worth a lot more than that. The key for us is to find someone who will be able to keep it and protect it and cherish it and make it visible in the future. It has of course export licenses from Germany where it was kept for the last 32 years and now it came with these licenses to Austria and for this reason it is also free to travel anywhere. There are no claims against it. An export license of it will be granted by the Austrian government. The piece itself is the largest seated Buddha of this type which is late 5th to early 6th century had a large stucco ware type. A lot of Buddhas were made back in those days. They all have massive restorations because many of them were already destroyed when there was a major Muslim attack in Hadar and in the main stupa the four directional Buddha's for instance were completely destroyed and only reassembled in the late 1920s by British explorers who collected money to do it. This one is not from that group, from another group, but essentially you have to take into consideration that none of these stucco Buddhas as nice as they look do not have restorations. They have all significant restorations as is typical for these wares. You can see there are some cracks which have been filled. There is a transportation crate that is so well constructed that it costs more than a lot of the Buddhas that we have sold in the past so it can ship globally in this crate. That's not a problem it just takes a little bit of time because it has to go with sea freight of course. It is well protected. Now the red color here as we see it tells us that the Buddha was once painted completely this red color. Some of it is covered by the sand here that you see. That sand is partially from the soil but also has been partially artificially applied by the restorers to cover their restoration work. Originally this was painted in red. The color itself has been renewed many times. The oldest layer is probably 100 maybe 200 maybe 300 years old. I don't know. It's certainly not 1500 years old because we know from all the Buddhist temple sites and from all the Buddhist statues that they have been painted over and over and over again across the millennia. So this is very important to see. The piece was also displayed for the last 12 years at the Museum for Asian Art in Radefrommwald. Prominently of course very nice and it's now being deaccessioned by the Museum of Asian Art and by Peter Hart who operates the museum. It's a private museum. Now as you can also see some of the stucco pieces that are found in Sito for instance as in Takdibahi in Pakistan which date also from the 5th century are stucco fragments of feet of heads and of other parts and they can be very very large. Significantly larger than this one. There are Buddhas that have a size of up to five six meters meet in stucco but none of these were ever preserved as a whole. This one is very clearly assembled from one single piece so there's not the head or the halo or the hands that come from another piece. This is all one piece but it was also damaged in the centuries before and reassembled and repaired multiple times as all stucco Buddhas essentially are and you can see that with some images from Bamala where you see how these statues look like if they are untouched even for a few centuries only. They are really heavily damaged if you compare them with the ones that we have shown in the literature comparison. These are of course all removed from their original sites and then look much better and the reason for that is because of course like this one they have been restored. As for auction result comparisons of course never ever in history a large stucco Buddha like this one has been at auction. That we must be very clear. The market therefore there's no real comparison. We can compare with smaller pieces that have 60 centimeters like the one that sold at Christie's 20 years ago for 400,000 euros and then we have a large Relief which is 120 centimeters so it's a bit larger in the width than this one but of course the height is only like this and that sold for 380,000 euros but nothing that is even close to this one in size. There is a very nice head which was super large 61 centimeters. This is a very important head which sold for 600,000 euros. This head is in an extremely good condition and this is an absolutely unique piece. This one is also unique because it's a whole figure not just the head but the head itself here that we compare with is in better condition than the statue we have to admit that. It sold for 600,000 euros. What you're seeing here is a real museum piece. It's a once in a lifetime opportunity that is if you have the space to present the piece like that. It comes with this massive wooden base by the way so it's quite stable and also when you look at the image from the back side you see that there is a steel construction that is holding the piece. Some of the weight of course is from the base and from the steel construction that holds it together. It's very stable. The construction is from the museum and was also certified at the time because as a public museum they had to make sure that the piece cannot fall or move. The whole construction has a safety approval. If you have any questions about this piece you can email me otherwise I hope you have a place for it and you can bid on it. Good luck in bidding and I'll see you at the auction.