A female Rhythm Pounder - called Deblé - borderdestrict Ivory Coast/ Mali. with short legs and feet sunk into a heavy conical base. Hands rest on thighs. The figure has an elgant, slightly bent torso, framed by openwork arms and rectangular shoulders. There are incised straight lines on cheeks and the tapering breasts, and on abdomen which is pointed. The face is flat and heart shaped with heavy lidded eyes and a notched mouth. The ears are circular and she has a domed hair-crest; dark surface with a smooth and polished patina, the arms and the neck, by which the figure is held when in use has a shiny intensive touchpatina from the ritual use during the funeral ceremonies. Probably this sculpture is coming from the same workshop or even the same carver like a very similar, which was collected in the same region.

Condition report: the sculpture has a waterdamage at the right side of the back, at the upper end of the torso and at the right buttock behind the hand, a small whole in the plinth and a darker spot at the back of the conical stand, the domed crest has an agecrack, related to an estimated age of 80 to 100 years the sculpture is in good, at least acceptable condition.

This type of sculptures - kown under the name deble - is one of the most famous works of West African Art. After the early 1960th, when the Massa-movement destroyed most of the important Senufo objects, only a few old, authentic Rhythm Pounder were saved and came to Western world. There are no sculptures from the time before 1960 existing anymore in the Senufo region of Ivory Coast, Burkina and Mali. But in some rural regions the old animistic tradition is still existing and also the funeral ceremonies, in which the deble rhythm pounder has it´s ritual function. There are differences in the ceremonies in comparison to the years before 1960. In particular the holy groves, doesn´t exist anymore or arn´t known by Western ethnologists. It were secret fields, where the Senufo placed their ritual sculptures in the forest.These precious objects would probably be stolen immediately, because in nearly every village the Islamic influence becomes stronger and there are more people, who are against the old animistic tradion than decades before. Now these objects are protected in huts close to the village.
Homberger, Lorenz (Katalog) Die Kunst der Senufo aus Schweizer Sammlungen. Texte: Till Förster, Objektfotos: Wettsein+Kauf Zürich, Museum Rietberg, 1988, Koloss, Hans-Joachim; Förster, Till, Die Kunst der Senufo, Elfenbeinküste, 1979. Museum für Völkerkunde, Berlin, Burkhard Gottschalk Senoufo. Massa et les Statues du Poro, Düsseldorf: Verlag U. Gottschalk, 2002

according of Gottschalk, who tryed to make a typolgy of the Senufo Déblé these exemplares would be probably submitted to the group of the kulibèlè and not the fonombèlè.

"While the former (fonombèlè), either due to lack of ability to finer work (the fonombèlè are the blacksmiths in the Senufo society) or deliberately used stylistic device, the clear and powerful forms, the contrasting horizontal and vertical as largely in the determination the proportions were created, the kulibèlè (the traditional carver) sought a soft flowing of body parts, as far as they did not take the style of their older brothers in their work or copied him more or less. Gottschalk Burkhard, "Senufo, Massa and the statues of poro" 2002: 43.

More realistic sounds the opinion of Glaze, who described the difficulties of a stylistic typology according of both ethnic groups after she did fieldwork around kufulo (region of Dikodougou)Glaze Anita J., "Art and Death in a Senufo Village", Indiana University Press, Bloomington 1981: 214.

4.800 - 5.600,- Euro

Height: 134 cm
Weight: 6,6 kg