A bronze sculpture - Plaque - Benin - Nigeria
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Bronze relief plaque from Nigeria in the Benin courtly tradition, titled 'A bronze sculpture', depicting a horseman mounted on a horse and offered as original/official in fair condition.
AI-assisted summary
Description from the seller
The present relief plaque depicts an elaborately adorned horseman mounted on a horse moving to the left and belongs to an exceptionally rare iconographic group within the courtly brass-casting tradition of the Kingdom of Benin. While equestrian subjects in the form of fully three-dimensional sculptures are well known and represented in major museum collections, the translation of this motif into the format of a palace plaque appears to be considerably rarer.
Of particular importance is the comparison with the Relief Plaque: Horseman in the Weltmuseum Wien, inv. no. 64796. The Vienna example belonged to the collection of Captain Wilhelm Albert Maschmann and entered the museum in 1899. The Weltmuseum dates it to the 16th/17th century, identifies its material as brass, and attributes it to an unknown master of the brass-casters’ guild of the Kingdom of Benin. The early accession of the Vienna plaque provides an important historically documented reference point for the existence of the equestrian subject within the corpus of Benin palace plaques.
The relationship between the present work and the Vienna plaque is significant not simply because both represent a mounted figure, but because they demonstrate the adaptation of a highly distinctive sculptural type to the rectangular architectural format of the palace plaque. The Vienna comparison therefore establishes that the equestrian image was not confined to the much better-known free-standing sculptures but also formed part, albeit apparently a very uncommon one, of the historical repertoire of Benin relief casting.
In the present plaque, the relationship to sculpture in the round is further emphasized by the exceptional depth of the relief. Horse and rider project strongly from the densely worked background. The head and neck of the horse, the rider’s torso and arms, and particularly his imposing headdress are modelled almost entirely in the round. The lateral view demonstrates how dramatically the figure projects from the supporting plate. The work thus occupies a fascinating intermediate position between architectural relief and independent sculpture.
The rider wears an elaborate high headdress incorporating long feather-like elements, extensive neck and body ornaments and bracelets. One hand controls the reins while the raised hand holds a long weapon or spear. The horse itself is carefully modelled and furnished with elaborate harness equipment. Both the elevated status of the rider and the visual emphasis placed upon the horse are characteristic of an image concerned with rank, authority and military or political power.
The closest broader historical context is provided by the celebrated free-standing Benin horsemen. The precise identity of these figures has, however, remained the subject of considerable scholarly debate. It would therefore be misleading to assign a definitive historical name to the rider on the present plaque.
One influential interpretation associates the equestrian figure with Oranmiyan, the prince from Ife who occupies a fundamental position in Benin dynastic tradition and who was traditionally associated with the introduction of horses into Benin. Other interpretations have identified the horseman as a ruler of Benin. Tunis proposed Oba Ehengbuda (c. 1578–1608), represented in the equipment of an Oyo-Yoruba cavalryman, while Karpinski followed an interpretation advanced by Paula Ben-Amos connecting the type with Oranmiyan. William Fagg had earlier interpreted one important horseman as an emissary from a northern emirate. Joseph Nevadomsky subsequently proposed the Attah of Idah, ruler of the Igala, and later argued for an association with Oba Esigie and the historical memory of the Benin-Idah conflict. The British Museum’s discussion of its major free-standing horseman records these competing interpretations and stresses the multiple and overlapping meanings of the equestrian image within Benin court art.
The question of identification is therefore best left open. What can be stated with greater confidence is that the horseman constituted a powerful courtly image associated with rulership, conquest, prestige and political authority. The present plaque is particularly important because it translates this celebrated sculptural type into the architectural and historical context of the palace plaque.
The surface treatment is equally remarkable. The background is densely punched and covered with an extensive pattern of stylized floral or rosette motifs, creating a richly articulated field against which the strongly projecting horse and rider are set. Of particular art-historical interest are the patterned lateral flanges, where an elaborate interlaced or woven-band design is clearly visible.
These flange patterns acquire particular significance in light of the outstanding work of Kathryn Wysocki Gunsch. Her systematic study of the Benin plaques represents one of the most important recent contributions to the understanding of the corpus. Working with nearly 850 surviving plaques, Gunsch combined iconography, historical documentation, oral traditions and close examination of the physical characteristics of the objects in an ambitious reconstruction of workshop groups and the possible original arrangement of the plaques within the palace. Her publication specifically classifies plaques according to flange-pattern categories and sub-types, thereby giving features that had previously received comparatively little attention an important role in reconstructing relationships within the corpus. (Routledge)
The importance of Gunsch’s work is demonstrated by its adoption in current museum cataloguing. The British Museum, for example, explicitly assigns plaques to her flange-pattern groups, including the “double-woven flange pattern” group, and relates individual works to the processional pillar sets reconstructed in her study. The conspicuous interlaced pattern on the flanges of the present plaque therefore deserves particularly careful comparison with Gunsch’s categories and with the flange treatment of the Vienna horseman.
At the same time, the considerable value of Gunsch’s art-historical achievement should be distinguished from independent scientific authentication of an individual object. Her methodology provides an exceptionally sophisticated framework for comparative classification, workshop relationships and the reconstruction of the plaque corpus, but such art-historical evidence cannot in itself substitute for scientific examination when assessing a previously unstudied work.
Given the exceptional rarity of the equestrian subject in plaque form, we would therefore recommend that the acquisition of the present work by a serious collection be accompanied by a comprehensive technical and scientific investigation. If original ceramic casting-core material survives within protected areas of the casting, thermoluminescence analysis of suitable core material should be considered. It is important to emphasize that TL does not date the brass itself; under appropriate circumstances it can provide evidence concerning the last firing of ceramic material associated with the casting process. Examination of the alloy composition, casting technology, corrosion products, surface and any surviving core material would provide valuable complementary evidence.
Such scientific investigation would not diminish the significance of Gunsch’s methodology but would complement it. The combination of art-historical typology, flange-pattern analysis, iconographic comparison, casting technology and independent scientific evidence would offer an unusually strong basis for assessing this remarkable object.
The particular importance of the present plaque lies in the conjunction of several unusual characteristics: the extreme rarity of the equestrian subject within the plaque corpus, the almost fully three-dimensional modelling of horse and rider, the richly punched and ornamented background, and the distinctive interlaced flange decoration. The historically documented horseman plaque from the former Maschmann collection, now Weltmuseum Wien inv. no. 64796, provides an especially important museum comparison and confirms the presence of this unusual iconographic type within the historical corpus of Benin palace plaques.
Selected Literature
Kathryn Wysocki Gunsch, The Benin Plaques: A 16th Century Imperial Monument, London and New York: Routledge, 2018. Particularly relevant are the sections on workshop practice and architectural installation and Annexes 1–2 devoted to flange-pattern categories and sub-types.
Paula Girshick Ben-Amos, The Art of Benin, London: British Museum Press, 1995.
Paula Ben-Amos, Art, Innovation, and Politics in Eighteenth-Century Benin, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999.
William B. Fagg, Nigerian Images, London: Lund Humphries, 1963; later edition cited in the British Museum bibliography, London: Lund Humphries, 1973.
William B. Fagg, Divine Kingship in Africa, London: British Museum Publications, 1978.
Felix von Luschan, Die Altertümer von Benin, 3 vols., Berlin: Veröffentlichungen aus dem Museum für Völkerkunde, 1919.
Philip J. C. Dark, An Introduction to Benin Art and Technology, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973.
Joseph Nevadomsky, “The Benin Bronze Horseman as the Ata of Idah,” African Arts, vol. 19, no. 4, August 1986, pp. 40–47. )
Weltmuseum Wien, Relief Plaque: Horseman, Edo, Kingdom of Benin, 16th/17th century, brass, inv. no. 64796, Collection Wilhelm Albert Maschmann, accessioned 1899.
British Museum, London, Collections Online, Benin equestrian figure, museum no. Af1944,04.13, with extensive discussion of the interpretations proposed by Fagg, Tunis, Karpinski, Ben-Amos and Nevadomsky.
British Museum, London, Collections Online, Benin palace plaques, particularly entries classified according to Kathryn Wysocki Gunsch’s flange-pattern groups and reconstructed Processional Pillar Sets.
The price is without the price for the TL analysis but can be done within four weeks for 350,- Euro.
Some of the information is generated by artificial intelligence and is based on published sources from the fields of ethnography, archaeology, and art history.
Invt. No. MAZ22030
The seller guarantees and can prove that the object was obtained legally. The seller was informed by Catawiki that they had to provide the documentation required by the laws and regulations in their country of residence. The seller guarantees and is entitled to sell/export this object. The seller will provide all provenance information known about the object to the buyer. The seller ensures that any necessary permits are/will be arranged. The seller will inform the buyer immediately about any delays in obtaining such permits.
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.
------------
Galerie Wolfgang Jaenicke is a Berlin-based gallery specializing in West African sculpture, bronzes, terracottas, masks, and contemporary African art. It is directed by Wolfgang Jaenicke, whose work combines collecting, dealing, provenance research, fieldwork, and archival documentation.
According to the gallery’s own account, Jaenicke studied ethnology, art history, and comparative law and has worked in the field of African art for more than twenty-five years. His activities developed through long-term engagement in countries including Mali, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Ghana, and Togo. Rather than presenting African art as a closed historical category, he describes it as a continuing cultural tradition shaped by living communities and changing historical contexts.
A particularly important phase of his career was in Mali, where he lived and worked between roughly 2002 and 2012 in Bamako and Ségou. There he operated Tribalartforum, a gallery that combined historical African sculpture with contemporary African photography, including works by Malick Sidibé. The political and military crisis in Mali in 2012 led to the closure of this phase of activity.
Later, together with Aguibou Kamaté, Jaenicke continued working from Lomé, Togo, before establishing a gallery presence in Berlin near Charlottenburg Palace. The gallery places particular emphasis on West African bronzes, terracottas, Benin and Ife-related works, Nok sculpture, Dogon art, Baule sculpture, Senufo objects, and Yoruba material.
One distinctive aspect of Jaenicke’s public position is his repeated emphasis on provenance transparency and restitution debates. On several published object records, the gallery explicitly discusses issues surrounding export documentation, UNESCO conventions, ownership histories, and communication with scholars and restitution researchers. These statements reflect broader contemporary debates about the circulation of African cultural heritage, legality, collecting history, and museum acquisition practices.
The gallery maintains extensive online archives and catalogues documenting hundreds of African objects, including Benin and Ife bronzes, Nok terracottas, Dogon sculptures, Baule figures, Fon objects, Moba figures, and other West African material.
For researchers interested in the history of the African art trade, Jaenicke represents a later generation of dealers compared with figures such as John J. Klejman. Whereas Klejman belonged to the postwar New York market of the 1950s–1970s, Jaenicke’s work has been shaped by contemporary concerns with field documentation, provenance research, restitution discussions, digital archives, and direct engagement with West African networks and artists.
This text is based on AI Information
The present relief plaque depicts an elaborately adorned horseman mounted on a horse moving to the left and belongs to an exceptionally rare iconographic group within the courtly brass-casting tradition of the Kingdom of Benin. While equestrian subjects in the form of fully three-dimensional sculptures are well known and represented in major museum collections, the translation of this motif into the format of a palace plaque appears to be considerably rarer.
Of particular importance is the comparison with the Relief Plaque: Horseman in the Weltmuseum Wien, inv. no. 64796. The Vienna example belonged to the collection of Captain Wilhelm Albert Maschmann and entered the museum in 1899. The Weltmuseum dates it to the 16th/17th century, identifies its material as brass, and attributes it to an unknown master of the brass-casters’ guild of the Kingdom of Benin. The early accession of the Vienna plaque provides an important historically documented reference point for the existence of the equestrian subject within the corpus of Benin palace plaques.
The relationship between the present work and the Vienna plaque is significant not simply because both represent a mounted figure, but because they demonstrate the adaptation of a highly distinctive sculptural type to the rectangular architectural format of the palace plaque. The Vienna comparison therefore establishes that the equestrian image was not confined to the much better-known free-standing sculptures but also formed part, albeit apparently a very uncommon one, of the historical repertoire of Benin relief casting.
In the present plaque, the relationship to sculpture in the round is further emphasized by the exceptional depth of the relief. Horse and rider project strongly from the densely worked background. The head and neck of the horse, the rider’s torso and arms, and particularly his imposing headdress are modelled almost entirely in the round. The lateral view demonstrates how dramatically the figure projects from the supporting plate. The work thus occupies a fascinating intermediate position between architectural relief and independent sculpture.
The rider wears an elaborate high headdress incorporating long feather-like elements, extensive neck and body ornaments and bracelets. One hand controls the reins while the raised hand holds a long weapon or spear. The horse itself is carefully modelled and furnished with elaborate harness equipment. Both the elevated status of the rider and the visual emphasis placed upon the horse are characteristic of an image concerned with rank, authority and military or political power.
The closest broader historical context is provided by the celebrated free-standing Benin horsemen. The precise identity of these figures has, however, remained the subject of considerable scholarly debate. It would therefore be misleading to assign a definitive historical name to the rider on the present plaque.
One influential interpretation associates the equestrian figure with Oranmiyan, the prince from Ife who occupies a fundamental position in Benin dynastic tradition and who was traditionally associated with the introduction of horses into Benin. Other interpretations have identified the horseman as a ruler of Benin. Tunis proposed Oba Ehengbuda (c. 1578–1608), represented in the equipment of an Oyo-Yoruba cavalryman, while Karpinski followed an interpretation advanced by Paula Ben-Amos connecting the type with Oranmiyan. William Fagg had earlier interpreted one important horseman as an emissary from a northern emirate. Joseph Nevadomsky subsequently proposed the Attah of Idah, ruler of the Igala, and later argued for an association with Oba Esigie and the historical memory of the Benin-Idah conflict. The British Museum’s discussion of its major free-standing horseman records these competing interpretations and stresses the multiple and overlapping meanings of the equestrian image within Benin court art.
The question of identification is therefore best left open. What can be stated with greater confidence is that the horseman constituted a powerful courtly image associated with rulership, conquest, prestige and political authority. The present plaque is particularly important because it translates this celebrated sculptural type into the architectural and historical context of the palace plaque.
The surface treatment is equally remarkable. The background is densely punched and covered with an extensive pattern of stylized floral or rosette motifs, creating a richly articulated field against which the strongly projecting horse and rider are set. Of particular art-historical interest are the patterned lateral flanges, where an elaborate interlaced or woven-band design is clearly visible.
These flange patterns acquire particular significance in light of the outstanding work of Kathryn Wysocki Gunsch. Her systematic study of the Benin plaques represents one of the most important recent contributions to the understanding of the corpus. Working with nearly 850 surviving plaques, Gunsch combined iconography, historical documentation, oral traditions and close examination of the physical characteristics of the objects in an ambitious reconstruction of workshop groups and the possible original arrangement of the plaques within the palace. Her publication specifically classifies plaques according to flange-pattern categories and sub-types, thereby giving features that had previously received comparatively little attention an important role in reconstructing relationships within the corpus. (Routledge)
The importance of Gunsch’s work is demonstrated by its adoption in current museum cataloguing. The British Museum, for example, explicitly assigns plaques to her flange-pattern groups, including the “double-woven flange pattern” group, and relates individual works to the processional pillar sets reconstructed in her study. The conspicuous interlaced pattern on the flanges of the present plaque therefore deserves particularly careful comparison with Gunsch’s categories and with the flange treatment of the Vienna horseman.
At the same time, the considerable value of Gunsch’s art-historical achievement should be distinguished from independent scientific authentication of an individual object. Her methodology provides an exceptionally sophisticated framework for comparative classification, workshop relationships and the reconstruction of the plaque corpus, but such art-historical evidence cannot in itself substitute for scientific examination when assessing a previously unstudied work.
Given the exceptional rarity of the equestrian subject in plaque form, we would therefore recommend that the acquisition of the present work by a serious collection be accompanied by a comprehensive technical and scientific investigation. If original ceramic casting-core material survives within protected areas of the casting, thermoluminescence analysis of suitable core material should be considered. It is important to emphasize that TL does not date the brass itself; under appropriate circumstances it can provide evidence concerning the last firing of ceramic material associated with the casting process. Examination of the alloy composition, casting technology, corrosion products, surface and any surviving core material would provide valuable complementary evidence.
Such scientific investigation would not diminish the significance of Gunsch’s methodology but would complement it. The combination of art-historical typology, flange-pattern analysis, iconographic comparison, casting technology and independent scientific evidence would offer an unusually strong basis for assessing this remarkable object.
The particular importance of the present plaque lies in the conjunction of several unusual characteristics: the extreme rarity of the equestrian subject within the plaque corpus, the almost fully three-dimensional modelling of horse and rider, the richly punched and ornamented background, and the distinctive interlaced flange decoration. The historically documented horseman plaque from the former Maschmann collection, now Weltmuseum Wien inv. no. 64796, provides an especially important museum comparison and confirms the presence of this unusual iconographic type within the historical corpus of Benin palace plaques.
Selected Literature
Kathryn Wysocki Gunsch, The Benin Plaques: A 16th Century Imperial Monument, London and New York: Routledge, 2018. Particularly relevant are the sections on workshop practice and architectural installation and Annexes 1–2 devoted to flange-pattern categories and sub-types.
Paula Girshick Ben-Amos, The Art of Benin, London: British Museum Press, 1995.
Paula Ben-Amos, Art, Innovation, and Politics in Eighteenth-Century Benin, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999.
William B. Fagg, Nigerian Images, London: Lund Humphries, 1963; later edition cited in the British Museum bibliography, London: Lund Humphries, 1973.
William B. Fagg, Divine Kingship in Africa, London: British Museum Publications, 1978.
Felix von Luschan, Die Altertümer von Benin, 3 vols., Berlin: Veröffentlichungen aus dem Museum für Völkerkunde, 1919.
Philip J. C. Dark, An Introduction to Benin Art and Technology, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973.
Joseph Nevadomsky, “The Benin Bronze Horseman as the Ata of Idah,” African Arts, vol. 19, no. 4, August 1986, pp. 40–47. )
Weltmuseum Wien, Relief Plaque: Horseman, Edo, Kingdom of Benin, 16th/17th century, brass, inv. no. 64796, Collection Wilhelm Albert Maschmann, accessioned 1899.
British Museum, London, Collections Online, Benin equestrian figure, museum no. Af1944,04.13, with extensive discussion of the interpretations proposed by Fagg, Tunis, Karpinski, Ben-Amos and Nevadomsky.
British Museum, London, Collections Online, Benin palace plaques, particularly entries classified according to Kathryn Wysocki Gunsch’s flange-pattern groups and reconstructed Processional Pillar Sets.
The price is without the price for the TL analysis but can be done within four weeks for 350,- Euro.
Some of the information is generated by artificial intelligence and is based on published sources from the fields of ethnography, archaeology, and art history.
Invt. No. MAZ22030
The seller guarantees and can prove that the object was obtained legally. The seller was informed by Catawiki that they had to provide the documentation required by the laws and regulations in their country of residence. The seller guarantees and is entitled to sell/export this object. The seller will provide all provenance information known about the object to the buyer. The seller ensures that any necessary permits are/will be arranged. The seller will inform the buyer immediately about any delays in obtaining such permits.
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.
------------
Galerie Wolfgang Jaenicke is a Berlin-based gallery specializing in West African sculpture, bronzes, terracottas, masks, and contemporary African art. It is directed by Wolfgang Jaenicke, whose work combines collecting, dealing, provenance research, fieldwork, and archival documentation.
According to the gallery’s own account, Jaenicke studied ethnology, art history, and comparative law and has worked in the field of African art for more than twenty-five years. His activities developed through long-term engagement in countries including Mali, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Ghana, and Togo. Rather than presenting African art as a closed historical category, he describes it as a continuing cultural tradition shaped by living communities and changing historical contexts.
A particularly important phase of his career was in Mali, where he lived and worked between roughly 2002 and 2012 in Bamako and Ségou. There he operated Tribalartforum, a gallery that combined historical African sculpture with contemporary African photography, including works by Malick Sidibé. The political and military crisis in Mali in 2012 led to the closure of this phase of activity.
Later, together with Aguibou Kamaté, Jaenicke continued working from Lomé, Togo, before establishing a gallery presence in Berlin near Charlottenburg Palace. The gallery places particular emphasis on West African bronzes, terracottas, Benin and Ife-related works, Nok sculpture, Dogon art, Baule sculpture, Senufo objects, and Yoruba material.
One distinctive aspect of Jaenicke’s public position is his repeated emphasis on provenance transparency and restitution debates. On several published object records, the gallery explicitly discusses issues surrounding export documentation, UNESCO conventions, ownership histories, and communication with scholars and restitution researchers. These statements reflect broader contemporary debates about the circulation of African cultural heritage, legality, collecting history, and museum acquisition practices.
The gallery maintains extensive online archives and catalogues documenting hundreds of African objects, including Benin and Ife bronzes, Nok terracottas, Dogon sculptures, Baule figures, Fon objects, Moba figures, and other West African material.
For researchers interested in the history of the African art trade, Jaenicke represents a later generation of dealers compared with figures such as John J. Klejman. Whereas Klejman belonged to the postwar New York market of the 1950s–1970s, Jaenicke’s work has been shaped by contemporary concerns with field documentation, provenance research, restitution discussions, digital archives, and direct engagement with West African networks and artists.
This text is based on AI Information
Details
Indigenous object name
Plaque
Ethnic group/ culture
Benin
Country of Origin
Nigeria
Material
Bronze
Sold with stand
No
Condition
Fair condition
Title of artwork
A bronze sculpture
Height
54 cm
Depth
42 cm
Weight
10.2 kg
Authenticity
Original/official
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
AGB des Verkäufers. Mit einem Gebot auf dieses Los akzeptieren Sie ebenfalls die AGB des Verkäufers.
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