Beschreibung:

Wood, pigment
Height of Male 27 3/4in (71cm)
Provenance
Jay C. Leff Collection, Uniontown, Pennsylvania
Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York, 22 April 1967, Lot 33
Stanley Lederman Collection, New York
Thence by descent
Literature
Fairservis Jr., Walter A., Exotic Art from Ancient and Primitive Civilizations, Collection of Jay C.Leff, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1959, p. 39, no. 226 (not illus.)
Exhibited
Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, Exotic Art from Ancient and Primitive Civilizations – Collection of Jay C. Leff, 15 October 1959 – 3 January 1960
As noted by Goldwater, "The most numerous, and to the outside world the most familiar, of Senufo wooden sculptures is a female figure, standing, or less frequently sitting, and usually between six and two feet high. Both functionally and stylistically these works are part of a more heterogeneous group that includes representations of mother and child, standing male and equestrian figures, and more rarely seated or standing couples. Such sculptures are made in all parts of Senufo country; the role they play in the religious pantheon is everywhere the same and the formal variations they exhibit have more to do with region than with their meaning, type or pose.
The standing figures are ancestral representations; but since mythical, i.e. tribal, ancestors of the distant past, and the more recent real ancestors are shown in exactly the same way, once they are out of their ceremonial context there is no way of telling them apart." (Goldwater, Robert, Senufo: Sculpture from West Africa, The Museum of Primitive Art, New York, 1964, p. 23)