Zemanek-Münster

Reliquary figure "mbulu-ngulu" ("spirit of a deceased") ·  Gabon, Kota, Obamba group · ID: 3044939

sold EUR 30,000
Provenance

Everett Burton Helm, Minneapolis/Berlin, USA/ Germany

Helm (1913-1999) was an American composer, musicologist and music critic. He studied at Harvard, and then after having been awarded a travel fellowship, with Gian Francesco Malipiero in Asolo, Italy and Ralph Vaughan Williams in England. In 1948, he was appointed Music Officer for the occupying US army in Germany.
From 1950 and into the 1960s, Helm worked as a music critic in Germany. In parallel, he was composing. The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra commissioned and premiered his First Piano Concerto in 1951, the same year as his first opera, Adam and Eve, was performed at the Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden.

Size
H: 50 cm
H: 19.7 inch

Description

wood, brass and copper sheet, nails,
The ancestral cult forms the centre of the religious and social life within the family collective.

When a patriarch died various relics were taken from his body and were kept in wickerwork baskets “usuwu” with stylized figures on top.

Each family clan owned such a reliquary ensemble, which were all kept in the background of the chiefs hut. At initiation rites the family clans gathered and each clan leader performed a dance holding the respective reliquary in his hands.


The object Reliquary figure “mbulu-ngulu” (“spirit of a deceased”) with the object ID 3044939 was part of the auction 90.I Tribal Art and 90.II Contemporary Native American Art on November 17, 2018. The object with the lot number 234 achieved a sales price of EUR 30,000 with an asking price of EUR 12,000.

You can find more Figures and other popular object types on our related topic pages. You may also be interested in our page on African art.


Comparing literature

LaGamma, Alisa (ed.), Eternal Ancestors, New York 2007, p. 259


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