A Senufo Rhytmpounder, called Déblé, of slender elongated form, Northern Ivory Coast, village Nafou - uprising from a cylindrical, oval, base with straight, shortened legs, the openwork arms carved beside a slender body with a small pointed navel, the columnar neck supporting a zoomorphic head with a protruding lower jaw, wearing a domed, single crested coiffure, scarification patterns at the body and around the navel; aged patina, the neck, the arms and the base of the statue with significant signs of use, the sculpture is still in the original condition like it was collected in situ with remnants of Kaolin.Normally these traces of use are washed off as soon as these objects arrive on the Western market.

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

"While the former (fonombèlè) either due to a lack of ability for finer work (the fonombèlè are the blacksmiths in the Senufo society) or as a consciously used stylistic device left the clear and massive forms, the contrasting horizontals and verticals largely as they had been created when the proportions were determined, the kulibèlè (the traditional carvers) strove for a soft merging of the body parts, as long as they did not adopt the style of their older brothers in their work or more or less copied it." Source: Burkhard Gottschalk

More realistic sounds the opinion of Glaze, who described the difficulties of a stylistic typology according to both ethnic groups after she did fieldwork around kufulo (region of Dikodougou). Anita J. Glaze, 81.

Lit.: A lecture of Dr. Junker, "der Originalzustand.. Wo ist er geblieben?" Gottschalk Burkhard, "Senufo, Massa und die Statuen des poro" 2002: 43; Glaze Anita J., "Art and Death in a Senufo Village", Indiana University Press, Bloomington 1981. A related eyemplare: Robert Goldwater, Senufo Sculpture from West Africa, New York, 1964, ills. 88 and 88a, Werner Gillon, Collecting African Art, London, 1979, p. 50, fig. 38 William Rubin, "Primitivism" in 20th Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern, New York, 1984, vol. 1, p. 131 William Rubin, Le Primitivisme dans l’art du 20e siècle. Les artistes modernes devant l’art tribal, Paris, 1987, p. 131 Jacques Kerchache, Jean-Louis Paudrat and Lucien Stéphan, L'art africain, Paris, 1988, p. 82, pl. 34, Jacques Kerchache, Jean-Louis Paudrat, and Lucien Stéphan (eds.), Die Kunst des Schwarzen Afrika, Freiburg, 1989, p. 80, pl. 34 Jacques Kerchache, Jean-Louis Paudrat and Lucien Stéphan, Art of Africa, New York, 1993, p. 82, pl. 34 Mary H. Nooter, Secrecy: African Art that Conceals and Reveals, New York, 1993, p. 155, cat. 79.

sold

Height: 128 cm
Weight: 11,7 kg