A Mumuye sculpture, Nigeria, Taraba region. Certificate of origin and provenance.

"In art-loving and art-historical circles, the name Mumuye is currently associated with a stunning corpus of figure sculptures and, to a lesser extent, with a wide variety of masks. (...) They marveled at the daringly modern, reductive interpretation of the human body that in many ways recalls the approach to anatomy adopted by artists of the Cubist and Expressionist movements in the early twentieth century. Today, almost fifty years after their sudden appearance in the European and American capitals of African art, Mumuye figure sculptures rank among the most cherished of sub-Saharan Africa."

Once the appropriate part of the trunk bas been selected, the location of the figure’s head is marked off and the contours of the statue are shaped. During the carving process, the shape of the figure’s shoulders will taper towards the base. The part from where the legs will be formed is first cut into the block. To shape the upper part of the hips and the waist, the carver renders the belt and marks the extremities of the arms. Then the wood between the arms and trunk is cut away, the separating the two elements. For the final work of carving the ears, nose and mouth,, the artist uses thee blade from his adze, a small knife, or a small chill. Finally, he cuts the figures legs out of the block.“ p.31 -32.

" Eventhough there is a lack of first hand information detailing the sculpture behind such figures, the anonymity of such artists who carved these human figures does not take away from their brilliance in technic and creativity. „The varied forms of Mumuye sculptures testify to the carver’ limitless inventiveness in the representation of the human body. As symbols of statures and rank, such statues are the personal property of individuals such as diviners, healers, and rainmakers, which may contribute to the sculptures’ freedom of expression" p. 17.


Henry Moore, BritisjhMuseum, 1938.

„Mumye is a collective term used to denote different sedentary farmer groups occupying the rocky hills south of the Benue River, between the towns of Jalingo in the Taraba State and Jeleng in the Adamawa State, in northeastern Nigeria. […] It is generally accepted, however, that the earliest figures to arrive in the West are two figures now housed at the British Museum, London, one memorialised by Henry Moore in his sketchbook.“ p.9

„Mumuye figures do, however, show similarity in style with those attributed to the Jukun […] which suggests cultural and religious affinities between them“ p.9.

Frank Herreman and Costantine Petridis wrote in the excellent Book about "MUMUYE, Sculpture from Nigeria. The Human Figure Reinvented" 2016.

It is in the 1970’s that Mumuye sculptures caught the attention of established museums in the West, following extensive scholarly research and publications around them in the 1960’s. Many exhibitions sprung from this keen interest in these figures, ranging from the Museum of Primitive Art, New York 1961, Die Kunst von Schwartz Afrika, Kunsthaus Zurich 1970’s, African Sculpture: The invention of the Figure, The Hague 1990’s, Visual Encounters: Afric, Oceania and Modern Art, Foundation Beyeler, Switzerland 2009, Central Nigeria Unmasked: Arts of the Venue River Valley at the Fowler Museum, UCAL 2011, to name but a few.

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Height: 110 cm
Weight: 7,3 kg

The sculptural traditions of the Mumuye people of northeastern Nigeria present a striking formal language that finds resonance with key developments in European modernist sculpture, particularly in the work of Jean Arp and Constantin Brâncuși. Though there is no historical evidence of direct influence between these traditions, the convergence in form, structure, and conceptual intent invites a deeper comparative consideration. Such an approach not only reveals the affinities between these visual cultures but also unsettles the often one-sided narrative of African art as a passive source for Western modernism.

Mumuye figures are notable for their highly abstracted human forms: elongated bodies, segmented limbs, and a complex interplay between solid and void. These works achieve a dynamic balance between asymmetry and verticality, creating a tension between stasis and movement that appears remarkably contemporary. The manipulation of space—particularly the incorporation of negative space as an active sculptural element—echoes strategies that Jean Arp developed within the context of Dada and Surrealism. Arp’s biomorphic forms, with their smooth surfaces and organic silhouettes, similarly reject mimetic representation in favor of an intuitive and poetic reduction of form. Like the Mumuye carvers, Arp explores the body not as anatomy but as a site of rhythm, flow, and symbolic compression.

In contrast, Brâncuși's sculptural vocabulary draws from a different lineage, but arrives at equally convergent ends. His vertical compositions—most notably Endless Column—articulate a modular repetition of simple, abstract units that evoke both the infinite and the sacred. Mumuye figures, often carved from a single piece of wood, rely on a comparable elongation of the human form, rendering the figure as an upright presence that transcends individuality. While Brâncuși’s work is deeply informed by Romanian folk traditions and a modernist ideal of essentialism, the Mumuye sculpture shares this concern for the archetypal. Both achieve an abstraction not through the denial of the human, but through its distillation into a purified, symbolic gesture.


Henry Moore, British Museum, 1920th.

What unites these practices is not a shared origin, but a shared approach to form as a means of philosophical inquiry. In both Mumuye sculpture and the works of Arp and Brâncuși, the figure is stripped of narrative and specificity, emerging instead as an emblem of presence, ritual, and interiority. The vertical axis becomes not merely a compositional tool, but a metaphysical one—a gesture toward continuity, transcendence, and the unseen forces that shape human experience.

To consider these works together is not to collapse their cultural specificities, but to recognize the possibility of parallel modernities—distinct yet connected explorations of form, space, and meaning. The Mumuye figure does not serve as a precursor or primitive model for European sculpture; it stands alongside it, fully autonomous and equally modern. By placing these sculptural traditions in dialogue, we begin to see how abstraction, often claimed as the domain of the Western avant-garde, in fact emerges across cultures as a vital strategy for negotiating the visible and the invisible, the material and the immaterial.