Plank mask with figural crowning
Burkina Faso, Bwa / Gurunsi (Winiama)
sold
EUR 2,900
Provenance
French Private CollectionFranz Müller-Steinfurth, Speyer, Germany
Helmut Bruchner, Munich, Germany (2008)
Size
H: 90 cm
H: 35.4 inch
Description
wood, pigments, base
A Bwa dancer with an almost identical mask is depicted on a field photo from 1983 in Roy, Art of the Upper Volta Rivers, 1987, p. 285, fig. 248. It is described as a mask of a leper.
Bwa wooden masks represent a number of characters in the myths of their families and clans. Other masks represent bush spirits that take supernatural forms (Roy, p. 269 f.).