Interiors & Decorations

Jewellery & Precious Stones

Watches, Pens & Lighters

Fashion

Coins & Stamps

Comics & Animation

Classic Cars, Motorcycles & Automobilia

Wine, Whisky & Spirits

Asian & Tribal Art

Trading Cards

Toys & Models

Archaeology & Natural History

Sports

Music, Movies & Cameras

Books & Historical Memorabilia

The finest objects brought to you by {name}

Julien Gauthier

A Mamprusi statue from northern Ghana, especially from the old Mamprugu cultural area near today’s Ghana–Togo border, belongs to one of the oldest royal and cultural traditions of the western Sudanese savannah. The Mamprusi (Mamprugu) people are part of the Mole-Dagbani cultural world and historically occupied territories extending across northeastern Ghana into northern Togo. Incl stand.

Such sculptures are comparatively rare in relation to the famous brass traditions of Kingdom of Benin because Mamprusi artistic culture focused more strongly on architecture, regalia, leatherwork, textiles, horses, drums, and ritual objects than on monumental figurative sculpture. When statues do appear, they are usually connected with ancestral remembrance, chieftaincy symbolism, shrine contexts, protective spiritual functions, or depictions of idealized warriors and elders. Wooden figures from the region often show elongated proportions, scarification marks, schematic facial features, and a restrained formal style characteristic of the savannah belt stretching from northern Ghana into Burkina Faso and Togo.

The border region between northern Ghana and Togo was historically an important cultural transition zone linking Mamprusi, Mossi, Dagomba, Konkomba, and Gur-speaking populations. This frontier environment shaped artistic forms and ritual practices. Mamprusi traditions also maintain strong ancestral and sacred associations connected to the legendary founder Naa Gbewaa, whose memory remains central to the political and ritual identity of related northern kingdoms.

If the statue is old and shows traces of libation, sacrificial material, smoke patina, or handling wear, it may have served within a shrine or domestic ritual context rather than as a purely decorative object. Many northern Ghanaian figures were functional ritual objects activated through offerings and communal ceremonies. In contrast to the courtly naturalism associated with Benin bronzes, Mamprusi sculpture tends toward abstraction and symbolic authority.

Visually, a Mamprusi statue may resemble other Voltaic or Gur sculptures from Burkina Faso and northern Togo: compact bodies, powerful frontal stance, geometric simplification, and emphasis on spiritual presence over anatomical realism. The dry savannah climate and long ritual use often produce heavily encrusted surfaces and deep dark patinas.

By contrast, Henry Moore approached abstraction through the language of twentieth-century European modernism. Moore was deeply influenced by non-Western sculpture, including African carving, Oceanic objects, and Pre-Columbian art, which he encountered in museums in London and Paris during the 1920s. Like many modernists, he admired what he perceived as the “directness” and sculptural clarity of African works. In Moore’s reclining figures and mother-and-child compositions, one finds similar emphases on volumetric simplification, organic mass, and archetypal human presence. Openings through the body, swelling forms, and tension between abstraction and figuration became central to his mature style.

Yet the resemblance between Moore and Mamprusi sculpture should not obscure their different conceptual frameworks. Mamprusi figures are embedded within living cosmologies and social systems, whereas Moore’s sculpture belongs to a modern Western discourse of autonomous art and individual creativity. Moore extracted formal principles from African sculpture while separating them from their ritual contexts. This process reflects a broader history of European modernism appropriating African forms as catalysts for aesthetic renewal.

Nevertheless, comparison remains illuminating. Both traditions demonstrate how reduction of detail can intensify sculptural presence. Mamprusi carving achieves spiritual concentration through severe abstraction; Moore achieves existential universality through organic simplification. In both cases, the human body becomes less a literal anatomical object than a vehicle for metaphysical or emotional force. The comparison ultimately reveals not direct equivalence, but parallel explorations of form, mass, and symbolic human presence across radically different artistic worlds.

Useful academic literature includes Christopher Roy, Art of the Upper Volta Rivers; Herbert M. Cole and Doran H. Ross, The Arts of Ghana; Suzanne Preston Blier, African Vodun: Art, Psychology, and Power; and Xavier Plissart, Mamprusi Proverbs. Susan Drucker-Brown’s studies on Mamprusi kingship, ritual, and social organization are also fundamental, especially “Horse, Dog, and Donkey: The Making of a Mamprusi King” and “Mamprusi Witchcraft, Subversion and Changing Gender Relations.”

The Mamprusi figure shown here bears a striking resemblance to certain works by Henry Moore from the 1930s to the 1950s, particularly through its use of pierced forms, its reduced geometry, and the tension it creates between mass and void.

Especially close parallels can be found in works such as Two Piece Reclining Figure No. 2, where the openings within the body and the monumental simplification echo the central perforation of the Mamprusi sculpture. Moore’s early Figure likewise shares a sense of archaic severity and block-like reduction, while the various Reclining Figures explore biomorphic hollows that resonate with the carved-out volumes of the African work. King and Queen is also relevant, particularly in its frontal monumentality and almost totemic vertical presence. Perhaps the most direct comparison is the Working Model for Upright Internal/External Form, where interior voids and external mass are fused into a single sculptural logic.

A well known Henry Moore sculpture last photos of this photo sequence (penultimate photo sequence).

What makes the comparison especially compelling is Moore’s idea of “inner form.” The openings in the Mamprusi sculpture are not merely decorative interventions; they function structurally and conceptually, generating a dialogue between presence and absence. This is precisely what fascinated Moore in African sculpture, which he encountered in the 1930s and from which he developed his own language of pierced forms, in which emptiness becomes as significant as solid matter.

A Hybrid sculpture Moore/Mamprusi created by AI (last photo sequence)

At the same time, the Mamprusi work appears more austere, more geometrically disciplined, and in a sense more architectonic than Moore’s organic vocabulary. Where Moore tends toward flowing, biomorphic volumes, this figure asserts a harder structural clarity. Its rectangular apertures even recall constructivist tendencies or later Minimal Art, giving it a surprising sense of modernity that, in some respects, exceeds Moore himself.

This relationship also points to a broader tension within modernism: European sculptors frequently adopted formal strategies from African sculpture while only partially engaging with their spiritual and social contexts. In the Mamprusi figure, the voids are likely embedded in a symbolic or ritual logic rather than serving as purely formal experiments. Moore, by contrast, translated such principles into a universalizing sculptural language, detaching them from their original cultural framework and re-situating them within the discourse of modern art.


Wood - Fair condition

A wooden sculpture - Mamprusi - Ghana  (No reserve price)

African & Tribal Art

Reserve price

No reserve price

Closing date

today

Friday

Wednesday

1 November

Thursday

Tuesday

tomorrow

Saturday

Budget

From

Location

Belgium

France

Germany

Austria

Spain

The Netherlands

Italy

Luxembourg

Portugal

Slovak Republic

United States

Switzerland

United Kingdom

Poland

Hong Kong

Ireland

Size

S (10–40 cm)

M (40–80 cm)

L (over 80 cm)

XS (under 10 cm)

Dimensions

Height

Width

Depth

Object

Tribal art and objects

Tribal sculptures statues carvings and figurines

Tribal masks

Figure

Textile

Sculpture

Dance mask

Fetish figure

Mask

Painting

Statue

Tribal weaponry and shields

Book

Cross

Vase

Decorative ornament

Ancestor figure

Stool

Necklace

Headrest

Spoon

Puzzle

Headdress

Traditional drum

Country of origin

DR Congo

Congo

Mali

Côte d'Ivoire

Nigeria

Gabon

Côte d’Ivoire

Ghana

Burkina Faso

Cameroon

Togo

Benin

Tanzania

Angola

Africa

Democratic Republic of the Congo

Ethiopia

Mozambique

Chad

South Africa

Kenya

Niger

Senegal

Material

Wood

Bronze

Terracotta

Copper

Leather

Metal

Iron (wrought)

Steel

Iron

Glass

Bone

Shell

Brass

Aluminium

Textiles

8kt gold

Gold

Horn

Stone

Earthenware

Iron (cast/wrought)

Patinated bronze

Animal hair

Gilt brass

Gender

Unisex

Condition

Good condition

Fair condition

Good condition - used with small signs of aging & blemishes

Excellent condition

Good

Excellent condition: barely used with minimal signs of wear

Fair condition -  heavily used & with possibly minor parts missing

Good condition - used with small signs of ageing

Very good

Needs restoration

Very good condition - slightly used with small signs of wear

As new

Good condition, used with some signs of wear

Very used condition, used with visible signs of wear

As new - unused

Excellent condition - barely used with minimal signs of wear

Good condition - used with some signs of wear

Very good condition, slightly used with small signs of wear

Period

Mid 20th century

1930-1940

Late 20th century

Early 20th century

1940-1950

1920-1930

1950-1960

1990-2000

Late 19th century

1960-1970

1980-1990

1970-1980

1850-1900

2020+

2000-2010

1900-1910

1910-1920

1800-1850

1400-1450

1500-1550

Mid 19th century

Early 19th century

2010-2020

Mid 18th century

Certification

No laboratory report

Subject

History

Portrait

Day scene

Pop Culture

Animals

Religion

Style

Folk Art

Vintage

Antique

Contemporary

Realism

Antique inspired

Classical

Neolithic

Expressionism

Postmodernism

Abstract

African & Tribal Art

This object is no longer available, but there’s still lots to explore

A wooden sculpture - Mamprusi - Ghana (No reserve price)

Popular in African & Tribal Art

1001 objects

Related collections