Focus on a lot : Dance mask "Mwana Po"

Dance mask "Mwana Po"

It features a female face with an intense expression accentuated by her coffee grains shaped eyes. Her mouth is drawn with care and balance and the top of her cheeks is decorated with scarifications symbolically evoking tears carved in relief.

Her forehead is clear and presents a characteristic symbol of this ethnic group. This work has kept its headdress made of ancient braided and knotted vegetable fibers, now a multitude of shells of cola nuts.

Wood. Former patina of use lightly reddish and brown. Nice tracks of internal carriage.

Tchokwé, Congo, Angola. End of the XIX° and beginning of the XX°.

Height : 23 cm

Origin : Former collection of a german painter, Beno gallery, Zurich, 1973. Auction of December 28, 2001 in Cannes Hotel Martinez, shown on the first page of the catalogue.

Exhibition : "Ils collectionnent....les arts de l'Afrique, d'Océanie et d'Amérique dans les collections privées marseillaises". Museum of Vieille Charité, Marseille, June 06 till September 30, 1995. Reproduced in the catalogue of the exhibition n°38.

It will be auctioned next April Sunday 21 in Cannes Hotel Martinez.