Amyas.net is the online presence of Amyas Naegele Fine Art Bases, Ltd., a private gallery in New York City specializing in African art. Amyas Naegele, the proprietor, fabricates custom mounts for three-dimensional objects of all kinds, restores ethnographic art, and offers traditional African objects for sale. The son and grandson of painters and graphic designers, Amyas grew up in New York City. He was first exposed to what was then known as “primitive art” at a very early age, through frequent trips to local museums and a close relationship with his next-door neighbors, the family of the preeminent pre-Columbian and antiquities dealer Edward H. Merrin. Amyas’s familiarity with rare traditional objects grew during summers spent working at the American Museum of Natural History. Following his graduation from Cornell University in 1978, he traveled for two and a half years throughout remote regions of Australia, New Guinea, Indonesia, Thailand, and the Indian subcontinent, deepening his profound interest in indigenous cultures. He later made lengthy overland journeys across South America and Africa, the latter of which he traversed from Tunis to Cape Town. These experiences engendered great affection for the land and peoples of our planet.
Amyas combines this love, as well as his firsthand knowledge of traditional cultures and the art and artifacts they produce, with a strong affinity for materials and a generations-deep aesthetic sense. He does not restrict art to figures and masks, nor to bowls, headrests, and hats. Art is the object, the craft behind it, and the sensitivity with which it is presented.
