A Baule maternity

A Baule maternity, Boukanda region, Ivory Coast, seated on an Ashanti stool, holding a child on her knees, scarification marks all over her body, a braided hairstyle; a partly shiny black surface, traces of age and ritual use. Certificate of origin and provenance. 

“To articulate historians, the most consistent features of Baule art is a kind of peaceful containment. Faces tend to have downcast eyes and figures most often hold their ams against the body. Among their abundant art forms, the Baule people continue to place the greatest value on masks and figure sculptures, which remain the only sculptural art still widely used in Baule villages. While there is a difference between the Baule view of their objects and that of Western connoisseurs, there are points of agreement. Aesthetic appreciation is one: Baule artists, and individual owners of objects, certainly sometimes enjoy the beauty of these objects and the skill it took coproduce them. Ornaments above the face are chosen for their beauty and have no iconographic significance.” Source: To the Western eye, an essence of Baule style.

Lit.: Susan M. Vogel (Hrsg.): Baule: African Art Western Eyes, 1997; Bernard de Grunne: Über den Baule-Stil und seine Meister. In: Eberhard Fischer/Lorenz Homberger: Afrikanische Meister. Kunst der Elfenbeinküste, Zurüch 2014, p. 81-106; Wolfgang Jaenicke: Maternities - West African Art by tribalartforum.

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Height: 46 cm
Weight: 1,6 kg