A male Baule, Blolo Bian sculpture

A male Baule, Blolo Bian sculpture, Ivory Coast, Sakassou, from a known workshop identified by Susan Vogel in 1994 as the "Nzipri workshop". The figure stands on a rounded base, the feet are disproportionately large, while the legs are short, strong gluteae, the genitalia is concealed by a loin cloth, a stocky torso decorated on the front and back with fine, elaborate scarification, as is the strong neck, the elegantly angled hands rest below the pointed navel on the abdomen, the teardrop-shaped head has a braided three-part beard. The hairstyle is divided into several very elaborately and differently designed braided sections. The face with its lowered gaze expresses an inward-turned calmness, characteristic of this traditional Sakassou workshop; remnants of sacrification,s cations:collected by Aboubakar Bakayoko, Abidjan, Ivory Coast. Certificate of Origin and Provenance.

The Baule believe that, in the otherworld called Blolo, all human beings were married before birth. These spirit spouses called blolo bian, meaning 'spirit husband', and blolo bla, meaning 'spirit wife', follow them into their human lives by way of human-figure sculptures called waka sran, or 'person in wood'. Baule people carve these figures to represent their otherworld spouses and they believe that these spirits have influence over their human lives.

Susan Vogel, African Art, Western Eyes,1994, page 14.

"To the Western eye, an essence of Baule style is a balanced asymmetry that enlivens while suggesting stability and calm. [...] To an art historian, the most consistent feature of Baule art, and one expressed across the wide variety of Baule object types, is a kind of peaceful containment. Faces tend to have downcast eyes and figures often hold their arms against the body, so that Westerners might feel that the mood of much classical Baule art is introspective." Susan Vogel.

This figure was collected in the Sakassou region, where Susan Vogel made fieldwork and identified the so called "Nzipi workshop" in 1994, and which was given later the name of "workshop of the Sakassou masters".

Lit.: Baule. African Art, Western Eyes, Susan Vogel, 1994, page 14/; Pierre Meauzé, L'art nègre: sculpture, Paris 1967, p. 64, no. 1; Margaret Trowell and Hans Nevermann, African and Oceanic Art, New York, 1968, p. 105. John McKesson, "La Collection de Robert Rubin", Arts d'Afrique Noire, no. 71, Autumn 1989, p. 14.

Height: 53 cm
Weight: 1,5 kg