Bembe or Buyu Ancestor Figure, Democratic Republic of the Congo

Pierre Dartevelle, Brussels, presumably acquired in situ in the early 1970s

European Private Collection

Sotheby's, London, Tribal Art, June 24, 1985, lot 56, consigned by the above

Barbara and Brian Wolfowitz, acquired at the above auction

Kerchache, J., Paudrat, J.-L. and Stephan, L., L’art Africain, Paris, 1988, p. 572, cat. n° 1010

Bacquart, J.-B., The Tribal Arts of Africa, Paris, 1998, p. 152, fig. 5

Dartevelle, V. and Plisnier, V., Pierre Dartevelle et les Arts Premiers. Mémoire et continuité, Milan, 2021, vol. II, p. 192, fig. 217

In the eastern regions of the present-day Democratic Republic of the Congo, near the western shore of Lake Tanganyika, one of Africa’s most refined, artistic, and inventive pre-colonial sculptural traditions developed as a means to commemorate and venerate important ancestors. Not to be confused with the Kongo-adjacent Bembe or Beembe of Congo-Brazzaville, a separate culture a great distance to the west known for their diminutive figural sculpture, the Eastern Bembe cultures produced ingenious sculptors, whose work has been celebrated since its “discovery” by the outside world, and especially since art-historical studies of the area began in the late 1940s. Study continued in the 1970s and 1980s, and more recently our understanding of these artistic traditions has been revisited and updated to reflect a more nuanced art-historical analysis. The works in question have been called, sometimes interchangeably and referring sometimes to a culture group, and at others to an artistic style: Pre-Bembe, Sikasingo, Basikasingo, Kasingo, Buyu, and Boyo, to give a partial list, or combinations thereof. The history of appellations associated with these works serves as a reminder that the naming of art styles by outsiders, that is, western art historians, can obscure the mixing, movement, influence and transferral of styles and traditions in pre-colonial Africa.

In terms of affinity, sculpture from the Eastern Bembe region has been called ‘cubist’ by observers relating them to the artistic movements of the European avant-garde, especially in comparison to related traditions of ancestor statuary among nearby and inter-related Hemba, Lega, Songye, Tabwa and Luba groups, whose existant sculpture is more numerous. The artistic concepts expressed by these Eastern sculptors are indeed structural and geometric, and embody a novel and rather strikingly unusual conception of the human form. While they follow the same general scale, formulae, and to some extent iconography as Hemba, Luba, and Tabwa ancestor statuary, the Eastern Bembe styles are distinctive and instantly recognizable. The comparison to Cubism, while interesting, is not sufficient to fully describe their artistic quality. The sculptors who composed these sacred ancestral images maneuvered the tension between geometry and fluidity, straight lines and curves, abstraction and naturalism; the result at the height of these traditions was a hieratic portrayal of the nobility, wisdom, and spiritual power of the all-important progenitors of the sculptor and/or his clientele.

The present figure is a quintessential example from one of the identifiable ateliers within these eastern traditions, expressing very well this tension of form: with a diamond-shaped face crossed by vertical and horizontal ridges separating flat faceted quadrants; horizontal, coffee bean shaped eyes; a deeply-pointed triangular form supporting the nose and mouth which descend from the face, dramatically separated from the cylindrical neck; a ridged coiffure made up of similarly-faceted geometries and sweeping backward from the face; shoulders formed of a faceted mass which seems to wrap around the top of the body; a cylindrical torso with gentle curves; openwork arms which separate from the body at the armpits but then return to connect together with the torso just under the pointed umbilicus; and the whole set upon short but massive legs.

Eight figures are known to survive from a workshop that has been identified using Morellian analysis of the existant corpus. De Grunne (2001) and others have referred to the sculptor (or sculptors) of this group of eight as the Master of Fizi, as unfortunately his proper name has not been remembered, after the village and territory by that name where works from this atelier were reportedly collected, in South Kivu province of the present-day Democratic Republic of the Congo.

There has been confusion in the literature and archives regarding the number of works known from this atelier, owing partially to the great similarity between certain of these works, which closely conform to a prescripted type. The work offered here, which was acquired by Brian and Barbara Wolfowitz from Sotheby’s London in 1985, is one and the same as the work illustrated as an exemplar of the type in the Mazenod Editions book L’Art Africain by Jacques Kerchaches, Jean-Louis Paudrat, and Lucien Stéphan, as well as by Jean-Baptiste Bacquart in The Tribal Arts of Africa of 1998. It is not to be confused with the very similar figure published in Marie-Louise Bastin’s Introduction aux Arts de l'Afrique Noire, exhibited at the Palais des Beau-Arts in Brussels in Utotombo. Kunst uit Zwart-Afrika in Belgisch firive-bezit, and sold at Christie’s Paris on June 15, 2002, which was previously in the collections of Jernander, Vranken-Hoet, Perinet, and Bobby Hass, then later in the Robert T. Wall Family Collection.

Thus the known corpus of this artist (or artists) should be revised to include eight sculptures, which is the number that Pierre Dartevelle approximated had survived by this artist (2009):

●      The figure previously in the collection of Gustave and Franyo Schindler, New York, published in William Rubin, ed., Primitivism in 20^th Century Art. Affinities of the Tribal and the Modern, 1984, p. 343, and sold at Binoche et Giquello, Paris, March 21, 2018, lot 54.

●      The figure from the collection of Daniel and Marian Malcolm, Tenafly, New Jersey (Schweizer 2013: 24, No. 94), which Pierre Dartevelle reported he acquired in the city of Kalemie (formerly Albertville) on the coast of Lake Tanganyika in between 1965 and 1968.

●      The figure today in the Fowler Museum at UCLA, Los Angeles, California (Vogel, Perspectives: Angles on African Art, 1987, p. 58).

●      The figure today in the Cleveland Museum of Art (inv. No. 1969.10), Cleveland, Ohio, acquired by Katherine C. Wright from John J. Klejman in 1962.

●      The figure previously in the collections of Ben Tursch, Mon Steyaert, Jean-Pierre and Anne Jernander, Guillaume Vrancken-Hoet, Michel Perinet, Bobby Haas, and Robert T. Wall published by Marie-Louise Bastin in 1984 (Introduction aux Arts d’Afrique Noire, n° 381), and sold at Christie’s Paris, June 15, 2002, lot 308, and which has sometimes been confused with the present figure.

●      A figure with the proper right lower arm lost, previously in the Walter and Molly Bareiss collection (Neyt, Arts traditionnels et histoire au Zaïre, 1981, pp. 304-305), sold at Sotheby's New York, May 16, 2008, lot 175 and shown at BRUNEAF 2017.

●      The figure previously with Pierre Dartevelle and Emile Deletaille, acquired by ‘Collection Z’ in 1970 and sold at Sotheby’s Paris on December 12, 2018, now in a European private collection.

●      The present figure, previously with Pierre Dartevelle (and presumably field collected by him) and acquired by Brian and Barbara Wolfowitz at Sotheby’s London in 1985.

Luc de Heusch (under his pseudonym Luc Zangrie), Nicolas de Kun, and Daniel Biebuyck made detailed studies of the lineages and interrelated groups within the groups of the eastern Congo, some of which involve suppositions and theories which contradict one another. Biebuyck supposed that there was an archetypal tradition among “Pre-Bembe” hunters, which influenced the style of later groups, the Buyu, Sikasingo, and Boyo. It has been debated whether these groups influenced or were influenced by the Luba (LaGamma 2002: 75). Viviane Baecke (2017: 77-79) refutes Biebuyck’s interpretation, relying on the field studies conducted by Pol-Pierre Gossiau , and suggests that the Eastern Bembe adopted the older style of Buyu ancestor statuary in order to legitimate their claims to land, under colonial pressure, by showing a long ancestral lineage and thereby legitimating their presence and prestige.

Discussing the figure from the so-called ‘Master of Fizi’ workshop formerly in the Bareiss collection Baeke continues (ibid.: 82): “Gossiau identifies it as being among the works from the Northern Nganja and Southern Lulenge sectors. A significant number of his interlocutors attributed the piece to the Be’ekesi, a small family belonging to the Basombo clan, which lived south of the Bashilugezi, between the villages of Katanga and Mabenga, very close to the Bembe border with the Bùyù". This family of sculptors (a father and his two sons) had an excellent and far-reaching reputation, and “had ostensibly worked for the Basombo, the Bashilugezi, the Bashihasingo, the Obekulu, and the Baseti, as well as for certain Bùyù groups, like the Basunga and the Benyabemba, and even Bangù Bangù families”.

The suggestion that the workshop in question in fact encompassed two generations and three individuals may explain the variation in the ‘Master of Fizi’ group, although further study will be required in order to develop a more nuanced understanding of this highly skilled atelier.