Ɵ Banda statuette, Mobaye area, Central African... - Lot 49 - Giquello

Lot 49
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Estimation :
100000 - 150000 EUR
Result with fees
Result : 116 110EUR
Ɵ Banda statuette, Mobaye area, Central African... - Lot 49 - Giquello
Ɵ Banda statuette, Mobaye area, Central African Republic Late 19th century Wood with dark brown patina and use, bone (?) inlays H. 41 cm Banda Figure, Mobaye area, Central Republic of Africa H. 15 ¼ in 100,000/150,000 Provenance: - Collected in the Mobaye area by Belouard, a French missionary, ca. 1910 - Pierre Dartevelle, Brussels - Baudouin de Grunne, Brussels - Bernard de Grunne, Brussels - Private collection Bibliography: - Alisa LaGamma, Echoing Images: Couples in African Sculpture, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 2004, p. 41, pl. 30. - Bernard De Grunne, et al, Masterhands: Afrikaanse Beeldhouwers in de Kijker/Mains de Maîtres: A la Découverte des Sculpteurs d'Afrique, Brussels, Espace Culturel BBL, 2001, p. 224, no. 79. Exhibitions: - Echoing Images: Couples in African Sculpture, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 10 February 2004 - 5 September 2004 - Mains de Maîtres: A la Découverte des Sculpteurs d'Afrique: Espace Culturel BBL, Brussels, 22 March - 24 June 2001 The history of the populations of the Oubangui region has been strongly marked by displacements and intermingling of populations linked to the culpable activities of the Chadian and Sudanese slave traders of the 19th century. The Banda people were certainly the most damaged by these incessant raids, which no doubt explains why, despite the size of their population, few works of art have come down to us. The plastic arts often need sedentarization, peace and prosperity to flourish within a society. However, at the beginning of the 20th century, a French colonial administrator by the name of Xavier Bellouard collected a certain number of statuettes in the Mobaye region with a style and workmanship so well defined that most of them were attributed by art historians to the same hand, that of the "Master of Mobaye". Very explicitly sexualized and functioning as a couple, these small sculptures were used at the time of the ceremonies of passage of the secret initiatory Banda associations, when the tangible presence of the ancestors was required by the ritual. It is likely that they were symbolically linked to the allegory of a couple of founding ancestors, like Seto and Nabo of the neighbouring Ngbaka. With controlled modesty, the work imposes itself... Well positioned on legs with the classic stylization of the region, the long torso with flattened arms carries a hemispherical head in the shape of a mushroom cap to the zenith. The face appears in the tangle of the headdress, a simple circular flat surface, inlaid with small round white eyes and separated into two halves by the very long nose. If the economy of means is optimal, the emotion provoked by this soft and naive look, turned towards the sky, is there. The "Master of Mobaye" signs in this statuette one of his too rare masterpieces. "He (Matisse) sees me looking at some wooden statues sculpted by indigenous Africans. These objects and a few fragments of Egyptian sculptures are almost the only ones, apart from the paintings, in the whole studio. He runs his hand over the statuettes, saying one word: "simplification". Charles Caffin, Matisse, Camera Work, n°25. Ɵ This lot is a temporary import
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