Mask - Congo (No reserve price)

kifwebe, Songye, République Démocratique du Congo |

The female kifwebe masks—devoid of a crest—are the rarest. Here, the characteristic audacity of the shapes—highly symbolic—is highlighted by the perfection of rhythm, organizing the dynamics of the volumes unfolded in space and the sequences of the linear decoration.

To the rigor of the forms responds the superb density of the image, playing on the conflicts between the roundness and the cut planes, between pictorial effects and the violence of features projected in very high reliefs, between the closed movement of concentric lines and the dynamics of the diagonals.

The geometric rigor, the perfect mastery of rhythm, and the density of the image recall the old masks collected in Songye country in the early years of the 20th century, particularly the one from the Henry collection.