A large Moba sculpture of atypical shape, instead of a spherical "head" this Moba has a haed like an open conical vessel, which shows us two essentials: first, this Moba was standing outside of the house, because inside of the vessel are significant signs of weathered erosions, which isn´t possible if figure was preserved inside of a Moba hut. Since the redisvovery of the Moba for the Art market in the 1980th nearly all Moba, which stood outdoors, were stolen by professional "Rabbateurs" of Western Art dealers. It took only a few year and no old Moao exists anymore in front of the Moba houses. In the following years a big productions of Moba copys arrived in Europe, stylistically close to the originals and sometimes made from old, weathered wood. In the descriptions of the Art market they are sometimes called "replacement exemplares", which were for a certain time in ritual use, but than sold. But most of them were only copys produced for the WesternArt market. I guess that this atypical Moba sculpture is an exemplare, which was made before 1980 and during the time when the many thefts took place, this sculpture was taken to a safe place, where it was kept in subsequent years. In any case, it is an extremely rare type of sculpture, which is not present in the literature and thus did not become a model for copies,

sold

Height: 116 cm
Weight: 14,8 kg