A terracotta sculpture - Bura - Niger
04
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Selected by Julien Gauthier
With almost a decade of experience bridging science, museum curation, and traditional blacksmithing, Julien has developed a unique expertise in historical arms, armour, and African art.
Estimate € 400 - € 480
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Description from the seller
A fragmentary reliquary in the style of Bura terracotta sculpture collected in Tillaberie region, Niger. Signs of ritual use and age.
The Bura culture stands as one of West Africa’s most enigmatic ancient civilizations, hidden for centuries beneath the sands and soils of what is now southwestern Niger and parts of northeastern Nigeria. Only in recent decades has it emerged into public consciousness, not through texts or oral history, but through the earth itself—revealing terracotta figures, burial mounds, and silent traces of a once-flourishing society.
Unlike the better-known empires of Mali or Songhai, the Bura people left no written records. Their legacy speaks through clay and iron, through forms shaped by hand and fired in open kilns. Their terracotta sculptures are striking, often abstract, with elongated limbs and stylized faces. Some are serene and meditative, others evoke mystery. These figures were more than art; they held ritual significance, often placed in or near graves as guardians or spiritual symbols. Their presence suggests a strong belief in ancestors and the unseen world, where the living and the dead remained closely linked.
What archaeologists uncovered at sites like Bura-Asinda-Sikka were not merely graves but entire ceremonial landscapes. Burials were often complex, sometimes involving large urns, upright stone markers, and offerings of tools, weapons, or jewelry. The craftsmanship of Bura ironwork is especially notable. Blacksmiths shaped not only utilitarian objects but also pieces that carried symbolic weight, underscoring the centrality of metal in both daily life and spiritual practice.
The rediscovery of the Bura culture brought with it both fascination and danger. In the 1980s and 90s, as the art world caught wind of these distinctive terracotta pieces, looters descended on archaeological sites. Artifacts were torn from their context and sold to collectors, museums, and galleries across the globe. This surge in illicit trade damaged many sites beyond repair, severing the material from its story. The very qualities that make Bura art compelling—its minimalist elegance, its mystery—made it vulnerable.
Despite the losses, scholars and cultural advocates continue to piece together the puzzle of Bura society. Each fragment unearthed from the ground adds to the understanding of a culture that, while long gone, still speaks through its forms. The quiet dignity of a terracotta figure, the worn edge of an iron blade, the silence of an unmarked grave—these are the voices of Bura.
To study Bura is to listen deeply, beyond what has been written or said. It is to engage with a culture that understood the power of presence, the resonance of materials, and the enduring ties between the past and the present. The legacy of Bura lives not only in museums or academic texts but in the persistent effort to protect what remains and to acknowledge the lives behind the artifacts.
"I believe that the import of all art objects from Africa—whether copies or originals—should be prohibited to protect Africa." Quote: Prof. Dr. Viola König, former director of the Ethnological Museum of Berlin, now HUMBOLDTFORUM
Legal Framework
Under the 1970 UNESCO Convention in combination with the Kulturgutschutz Gesetz (KGSG) any claim for the restitution of cultural property becomes time-barred three years after the competent authorities of the State of origin obtain knowledge of the object’s location and the identity of its possessor.
All bronzes and terracotta items offered have been publicly exhibited in Wolfgang Jaenicke Gallery since 2001. Organisations such as DIGITAL BENIN and academic institutions such as the Technical University of Berlin, which have been intensively involved in restitution-reseaches (translocation-project) over the past seven years, are aware of our work, have inspected large parts of our collection and have visited us in our dependance in Lomé, Togo, among other places, to learn about the international Art trade on site. Furthermore, the National Commission for Museums and Monuments (NCMM) in Abuja, Nigeria, has been informed about our collection. In no case in the past have there been restitution claims against private institutions such as the Wolfgang Jaenicke Gallery
Our Gallery addresses these structural challenges through a policy of maximum transparency and documentation. Should any questions or uncertainties arise, we invite you to contact us. Each matter will be reviewed diligently using all available resources.
CAB30949
Seller's Story
Wolfgang Jaenicke’s engagement with African art did not begin in the field or the marketplace but in a quieter, more inward space—among papers, books, and objects that belonged to his father. The archive on Germany’s former colonies was not arranged to tell a single story; it suggested many. It invited scrutiny rather than reverence, and it taught Jaenicke early on that objects are never mute. They carry time inside them—fracture and continuity held in the same form—and they ask to be read as carefully as texts.
For more than a quarter century, Jaenicke has worked as a collector, dealer, and intermediary, though none of these terms quite captures the shape of his practice. What used to be grouped, too casually, under the heading of “Tribal Art” has never appeared to him as a sealed or historical category. It is, instead, a set of living traditions, constantly negotiating the present. His academic training—in ethnology, art history, and comparative law—provided a grammar. The language itself he learned elsewhere. In Mali, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Togo, and Ghana, knowledge emerged slowly, through repeated encounters that hardened into relationships, and through trust built not all at once but over years.
Mali became the gravitational center of this experience. Between 2002 and 2012, Jaenicke lived and worked in Bamako and Ségou, where he ran Tribalartforum, a gallery overlooking the Niger River. The space resisted easy chronology. Sculptures and ceramics shared the room with photography, and works by Malick Sidibé—images of Malian youth in the 1970s, self-assured and exuberant—hung alongside older ritual forms. The effect was not nostalgic but clarifying: past and present did not cancel each other out; they sharpened one another.
The war of 2012 ended this chapter abruptly, as wars tend to do. But it did not dissolve the work. Together with Aguibou Kamaté, Jaenicke regrouped in Lomé, closer to the places where many of the objects originated and to the routes they continue to travel. Since 2018, Berlin has become another point on this map. Galerie Wolfgang Jaenicke now operates opposite Charlottenburg Palace, supported by a small team of specialists. Its focus rests, in particular, on West African bronzes and terracottas—materials shaped by earth and fire, and by forms of memory that resist easy translation.
What distinguishes Jaenicke’s practice is not only its geographical range but its internal tension. Fieldwork is paired with provenance research; commerce is treated as inseparable from responsibility. In collaboration with museums and scholarly initiatives, circulation is framed not as extraction but as an ethical process that remains unfinished. The aim is not to remove objects from the world and seal them off, but to keep them readable within it—to allow them to continue speaking, even as the conditions of their speech change.
A fragmentary reliquary in the style of Bura terracotta sculpture collected in Tillaberie region, Niger. Signs of ritual use and age.
The Bura culture stands as one of West Africa’s most enigmatic ancient civilizations, hidden for centuries beneath the sands and soils of what is now southwestern Niger and parts of northeastern Nigeria. Only in recent decades has it emerged into public consciousness, not through texts or oral history, but through the earth itself—revealing terracotta figures, burial mounds, and silent traces of a once-flourishing society.
Unlike the better-known empires of Mali or Songhai, the Bura people left no written records. Their legacy speaks through clay and iron, through forms shaped by hand and fired in open kilns. Their terracotta sculptures are striking, often abstract, with elongated limbs and stylized faces. Some are serene and meditative, others evoke mystery. These figures were more than art; they held ritual significance, often placed in or near graves as guardians or spiritual symbols. Their presence suggests a strong belief in ancestors and the unseen world, where the living and the dead remained closely linked.
What archaeologists uncovered at sites like Bura-Asinda-Sikka were not merely graves but entire ceremonial landscapes. Burials were often complex, sometimes involving large urns, upright stone markers, and offerings of tools, weapons, or jewelry. The craftsmanship of Bura ironwork is especially notable. Blacksmiths shaped not only utilitarian objects but also pieces that carried symbolic weight, underscoring the centrality of metal in both daily life and spiritual practice.
The rediscovery of the Bura culture brought with it both fascination and danger. In the 1980s and 90s, as the art world caught wind of these distinctive terracotta pieces, looters descended on archaeological sites. Artifacts were torn from their context and sold to collectors, museums, and galleries across the globe. This surge in illicit trade damaged many sites beyond repair, severing the material from its story. The very qualities that make Bura art compelling—its minimalist elegance, its mystery—made it vulnerable.
Despite the losses, scholars and cultural advocates continue to piece together the puzzle of Bura society. Each fragment unearthed from the ground adds to the understanding of a culture that, while long gone, still speaks through its forms. The quiet dignity of a terracotta figure, the worn edge of an iron blade, the silence of an unmarked grave—these are the voices of Bura.
To study Bura is to listen deeply, beyond what has been written or said. It is to engage with a culture that understood the power of presence, the resonance of materials, and the enduring ties between the past and the present. The legacy of Bura lives not only in museums or academic texts but in the persistent effort to protect what remains and to acknowledge the lives behind the artifacts.
"I believe that the import of all art objects from Africa—whether copies or originals—should be prohibited to protect Africa." Quote: Prof. Dr. Viola König, former director of the Ethnological Museum of Berlin, now HUMBOLDTFORUM
Legal Framework
Under the 1970 UNESCO Convention in combination with the Kulturgutschutz Gesetz (KGSG) any claim for the restitution of cultural property becomes time-barred three years after the competent authorities of the State of origin obtain knowledge of the object’s location and the identity of its possessor.
All bronzes and terracotta items offered have been publicly exhibited in Wolfgang Jaenicke Gallery since 2001. Organisations such as DIGITAL BENIN and academic institutions such as the Technical University of Berlin, which have been intensively involved in restitution-reseaches (translocation-project) over the past seven years, are aware of our work, have inspected large parts of our collection and have visited us in our dependance in Lomé, Togo, among other places, to learn about the international Art trade on site. Furthermore, the National Commission for Museums and Monuments (NCMM) in Abuja, Nigeria, has been informed about our collection. In no case in the past have there been restitution claims against private institutions such as the Wolfgang Jaenicke Gallery
Our Gallery addresses these structural challenges through a policy of maximum transparency and documentation. Should any questions or uncertainties arise, we invite you to contact us. Each matter will be reviewed diligently using all available resources.
CAB30949
Seller's Story
Wolfgang Jaenicke’s engagement with African art did not begin in the field or the marketplace but in a quieter, more inward space—among papers, books, and objects that belonged to his father. The archive on Germany’s former colonies was not arranged to tell a single story; it suggested many. It invited scrutiny rather than reverence, and it taught Jaenicke early on that objects are never mute. They carry time inside them—fracture and continuity held in the same form—and they ask to be read as carefully as texts.
For more than a quarter century, Jaenicke has worked as a collector, dealer, and intermediary, though none of these terms quite captures the shape of his practice. What used to be grouped, too casually, under the heading of “Tribal Art” has never appeared to him as a sealed or historical category. It is, instead, a set of living traditions, constantly negotiating the present. His academic training—in ethnology, art history, and comparative law—provided a grammar. The language itself he learned elsewhere. In Mali, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Togo, and Ghana, knowledge emerged slowly, through repeated encounters that hardened into relationships, and through trust built not all at once but over years.
Mali became the gravitational center of this experience. Between 2002 and 2012, Jaenicke lived and worked in Bamako and Ségou, where he ran Tribalartforum, a gallery overlooking the Niger River. The space resisted easy chronology. Sculptures and ceramics shared the room with photography, and works by Malick Sidibé—images of Malian youth in the 1970s, self-assured and exuberant—hung alongside older ritual forms. The effect was not nostalgic but clarifying: past and present did not cancel each other out; they sharpened one another.
The war of 2012 ended this chapter abruptly, as wars tend to do. But it did not dissolve the work. Together with Aguibou Kamaté, Jaenicke regrouped in Lomé, closer to the places where many of the objects originated and to the routes they continue to travel. Since 2018, Berlin has become another point on this map. Galerie Wolfgang Jaenicke now operates opposite Charlottenburg Palace, supported by a small team of specialists. Its focus rests, in particular, on West African bronzes and terracottas—materials shaped by earth and fire, and by forms of memory that resist easy translation.
What distinguishes Jaenicke’s practice is not only its geographical range but its internal tension. Fieldwork is paired with provenance research; commerce is treated as inseparable from responsibility. In collaboration with museums and scholarly initiatives, circulation is framed not as extraction but as an ethical process that remains unfinished. The aim is not to remove objects from the world and seal them off, but to keep them readable within it—to allow them to continue speaking, even as the conditions of their speech change.
Details
Ethnic group/ culture
Bura
Country of Origin
Niger
Material
Terracotta
Sold with stand
No
Condition
Fair condition
Title of artwork
A terracotta sculpture
Height
39 cm
Weight
3.9 kg
Sold by
GermanyVerified
protop
Rechtliche Informationen des Verkäufers
- Unternehmen:
- Jaenicke Njoya GmbH
- Repräsentant:
- Wolfgang Jaenicke
- Adresse:
- Jaenicke Njoya GmbH
Klausenerplatz 7
14059 Berlin
GERMANY - Telefonnummer:
- +493033951033
- Email:
- w.jaenicke@jaenicke-njoya.com
- USt-IdNr.:
- DE241193499
AGB
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