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It seems appropriate that this edition dedicated to William Fagg should include a testimonial to his good friend, whom he admired greatly and who predeceased him by less than five months.
Born in Antwerp on March 2, 1915 (less than a year after Bill Fagg), Albert Maesen studied the History of Art and Antiquities at the University of Ghent. He soon became interested in anthropology, a subject in which he was encouraged by his professor, Frans M. Olbrechts, helping Olbrechts to list the Belgian private collections which resulted in the Antwerp exhibition "Kongo Kunst" (1937-38). They collaborated on a book on the same subject, the seminal Plastiek van Kongo, which was ready for the printers in 1940, but not published until 1946. Bill Fagg acknowledged a debt to this work, in which Olbrechts was the first to approach African art using the morphological method--examining the form of the sculpture and studying the proportions as well as such ethnic traits as scarifications. Olbrechts found an apt pupil in Maesen, whose sensitivity to sculptures...