Brussels – One of the highlights of the first African and Oceanic arts auction in Brussels was a powerful lizardman figure, tangata moko from Rapa Nui (Easter Island) which sold for €114,700. Once owned by André Breton and later by collector René Gaffé, it was part of the famous exhibition of the Franco-Belgian mission to Oceania, at the Musée d'ethnographie du Trocadéro in 1935.

The prestigious Anne and Jacques Kerchache collection of African and Oceanic Art made a total of €158,000. Emilie Jolly, Head of the African and Oceanic Art department in Brussels, said: "We are thrilled to have sold many exceptional African & Oceanic works from the Anne and Jacques Kerchache collection, some of them never seen on the market. The sale offered quality works of art with excellent provenance, achieving fantastic results across all regional categories." Born in Rouen in 1942, Jacques Kerchache opened his first art gallery in Paris aged 18 and visited West Africa for the first time at 21.

He soon began displaying traditional West African art alongside artworks by European artists. Jacques Kerchache was also an artistic advisor and curator of exhibitions. He was an advocate of the Primitive Arts, promoting their entry into important French museum collections.

It was under his initiative that the Pavillon des Sessions was created at the Louvre in 2001, as well as the musée du quai Branly in 2006. Jacques Kerchache also collaborated with the Fondation Cartier on many occasions, first on the thematic exhibitions Àvisage découvert (1992) and être nature (1998) as well as on the solo show of the Haitian artist Patrick Vilaire in Réflexion sur la mort (1997).

Highlights from the Kerchache collection included:

• A Dogon Figure, Mali made of wood and metal sold for €19,200

• A group of 14 Fon Boccio figures featured in the Vaudou exhibition at Fondation Cartier in Paris in 2001 were offered including a Fon Boccio Figure from Benin sold for €12,800. As early as the late sixties, Jacques Kerchache recognized the aesthetic potency and stunning originality of voodoo statuary and its forms. During his first trips to the birthplace of voodoo currently known as the Republic of Benin, the collector began to bring together what became the most significant existing collection of African Fon boccio statuary.

Other highlights of the sale included:

• A beautiful Fang reliquary figure sold for €25,600 • AMbole figure formerly in the collection of the Belgian artist and collector Jean Willy Mestach (1926-2014) sold for €24,320

• A Korwar ancestor figure from Cenderawasih Bay , which was part of the extraordinary group of korwars in the collection of Henry Blekkink (1888-1953), sold for €17,920 above its estimate of €10,000-15,000. Henry Blekkink (1888, Java - 1953, The Hague) was aDutch geography teacher who spent the first ten years of his childhood in the Dutch East Indies. Henri Blekkink probably acquired his collection of Korwar objects from aProtestant missionary of the Utrecht Missionary Society, Frans Johannes Frederik van Hasselt (1870-1939).

• A Tiki Stone Head, Marquesas Islands sold for €25,600 . The image of the Tiki, a representation of the human being, is omnipresent in the Marquesas Islands, carved as free-standing figures, on architectural supports, utensils and ornaments.

• An Elema archer'sshield, Papuan Gulf, made of wood sold for €15,360, tripling its estimate.

• A New Britain mask, probably Kilenge or Cape Gloucester, nausung, sold for €12,160. Nausung masks were performed during the initiation ceremonies for young boys, specifically for the circumcision of the firstborn son. Women and uninitiated children were not permitted to see them.

• An impressive Nias Ancestor figure adu zatua which was once part of the collection of George Sadoul (1904-1967) , French film critic and member of the Surrealist movement sold for €7,680