Plank mask with figural crowning · Burkina Faso, Bwa · ID: 3053239
Starting price
EUR 2,000
Estimated price
EUR 5,000
Provenance
French Private CollectionFranz Müller-Steinfurth, Speyer, Germany
Helmut Bruchner, Munich, Germany (2008)
Zemanek-Münster, Würzburg, Germany, 16 November 2024, lot 128
German Private Collection
Size
H: 90 cm
H: 35.4 inch
Description
wood, pigments, base
A Bwa dancer with an almost identical mask is shown in a field photograph 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.
Publications
AHDRC: 0216288