Dan Mask, Ivory Coast

American cartoonist Al Ross (born October 19, 1911 as Adolf Roth in the Carpathian Mountain region of then Austro-Hungary, present-day Romania), a fixture in the New Yorker Magazine since 1937, was part of the first generation of collectors of African art in the United States. A member of the legendary group of New York artist-collectors around Jacques Lipchitz, Chaim Gross and John Graham, Ross started collecting African art in the 1930s.

William Siegmann (personal communication, March 18, 2010) notes about this mask: "This mask from the northern Dan area can almost certainly be attributed to the same carver as a mask collected during the 1938-1939 expedition to the Cote d'Ivoire by the University of Ghent and the Ethnographic Museum of Antwerp. That mask, now in the collection of the University of Ghent, was collected in the region of Gan and published by Vandenhaute (P.J. L. Vandenhaute, Classification stylistique du masque Dan et Guéré de la Côte d'Ivoire occidentale (A.O.F.),  Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1948, pl. V, no. 6). The subtle treatment of the cheek bones, eyebrows and flared nostrils as well as the handling of the mouth are features which distinguish this carver's work, giving it elegance and grace."