Lot 9

A Superb Senufo Female Figure, Ivory Coast

Estimate

25,000 - 35,000 USD

bidding is closed

Description

standing on straight legs, the female figure wearing an amulet around the neck; exceptionally fine deep glossy black and dark brown patina with traces of kaolin and red pigment.

Provenance

Samir Borro, Abidjan and Brussels
Michael Oliver, New York
Christian Duponcheel, Brussels
Acquired from the above, 1980s

Exhibited

Los Angeles, UCLA Fowler Museum, Imaging Women in Africa. Selected Sculptures from Los Angeles Collections, November 12, 2000 - May 13, 2001

Literature

Warren M. Robbins and Nancy Ingram Nooter, African Art in American Collections, Washington D.C., 1989, p. 199, fig. 166
Mary Nooter-Roberts and Alison Saar, Body Politics: The Female Image in Luba Art and the Sculpture of Alison Saar, Los Angeles, 2000, p. 65, fig. 4

Catalogue Note

This female figure, the work of a great carver, is distinguished by the pointed shoulders, the horizontally forward pointing hands, and the spectacular coiffure dominated by a central crest and four large braids pendant in groups of two from each side. For figures arguably by the same hand see Lehuard (1983: 23) for one formerly in the Beatrice Riese Collection, New York, and Barbier (1993: 43, fig. 38) for one in the collection of the Barbier-Müeller Museum, Geneva.