A wooden sculpture - Fon - Benin (No reserve price)
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A wooden sculpture from Benin, attributed to the Fon of the Comè region, a pair of anthropomorphic ritual figures, height 92 cm, weight 6.3 kg, sold with stand, in fair condition.
AI-assisted summary
Description from the seller
Fon Pair of Anthropomorphic Ritual Figures, Comè Region, Benin
Fon, Comè region, southwestern Benin
Wood with intense blue pigment and ritual patina
This remarkable pair of tall anthropomorphic sculptures is characterized by extreme vertical elongation, an intense blue surface and a highly reduced treatment of the human body. Although closely related in conception and evidently conceived within the same sculptural vocabulary, the two figures differ significantly in size and detail. The larger example incorporates a small secondary figure within its body, introducing an additional level of symbolic complexity.
Both sculptures are organized around an elongated cylindrical axis. Small feet rise from rounded integral bases and support long, almost uninterrupted bodies. The shoulders and arms have largely disappeared as independent anatomical elements; instead, the torso has been transformed into a smooth vertical volume. Raised horizontal rings articulate the body at important transitional points, dividing it into successive zones and reinforcing the sculptures' rhythmic vertical construction.
The heads are disproportionately large and elongated. Each has a high rounded cranium, projecting circular eyes, a short horizontal nose and an open oval mouth with individually indicated teeth. Large circular forms on the cheeks or temples further animate the face. The combination of staring eyes and exposed teeth produces an intense expression that contrasts strongly with the static, almost columnar body.
The necks are exceptionally long and covered with vertical grooves. These incisions create a strong textural transition between the relatively smooth bodies and the sculpturally concentrated heads. The repeated ring-like bands beneath the neck and near the lower body act almost like collars, bracelets or structural joints, though their exact significance cannot be established from appearance alone.
The larger figure is particularly unusual. An elongated opening has been carved into the lower torso, and within this cavity stands a much smaller anthropomorphic figure. The secondary figure appears deliberately integrated into the sculpture rather than added independently. This figure-within-a-figure construction immediately suggests ideas of containment, protection, dependency, descent or generational continuity, but without field documentation its precise meaning should remain open.
The smaller sculpture lacks this internal figure and presents a more continuous body. The relationship between the two works is nevertheless unmistakable: the same elongated heads, circular eyes, projecting noses, exposed teeth, ringed transitions and intense blue pigmentation occur in both. They may have constituted complementary ritual objects, although it cannot be established from the photograph alone whether they originally functioned as a formal pair.
The blue coloration is one of their most visually compelling characteristics. Thick pigment covers almost every surface, while abrasion exposes darker and lighter passages beneath it. Cracking and irregular accumulation indicate successive surface histories rather than a perfectly uniform decorative coating. The exact composition of the pigment cannot be determined visually.
Regional characteristics
Comè lies in southwestern Benin, in a culturally complex area west of the principal historical centers of the Fon kingdom of Dahomey. The region is characterized by long-standing interaction among Fon and other Gbe-speaking communities, including groups commonly identified as Xwla, Xweda, Mina and related populations. Consequently, an attribution to “Fon, Comè region” should be understood as valuable local information rather than as evidence for a narrowly standardized Fon sculptural style.
This regional distinction is particularly important because the religious arts of southern Benin are extraordinarily diverse. Within Vodun traditions, anthropomorphic sculptures may serve very different purposes according to their shrine, owner, spiritual association and ritual treatment. Some become receptacles or material supports for spiritual forces; others relate to protection, divination, healing, fertility or ancestral relationships. Physical appearance alone is rarely sufficient to determine the exact category.
The intense blue pigment deserves similar caution. Color can be highly significant within the visual and ritual systems of southern Benin, but its meaning is contextual. It would therefore be inappropriate to identify these figures automatically with a particular Vodun solely because of their blue surface.
The smaller figure enclosed within the body of the larger sculpture is potentially more informative. Images incorporating secondary human figures can articulate relationships between different beings rather than simply depicting an isolated individual. In the present case, the enclosed figure may evoke offspring, an ancestor-descendant relationship, spiritual protection or the containment of another presence. The conspicuous cavity makes this relationship central to the sculpture's conception. Nevertheless, identifying it specifically as a maternity image would go beyond what can securely be established.
The pair also illustrates an important characteristic of the ritual arts of the Fon cultural sphere: sculptural power does not necessarily depend upon anatomical naturalism. Here the human body has been transformed almost into a ritual column. Facial features are concentrated at the summit, while the remainder of the figure becomes an elongated container-like form. The larger sculpture makes this concept of the body as container especially explicit through its open cavity and internal figure.
Their extraordinary proportions give the sculptures considerable monumentality. The narrow silhouettes direct the eye upward from the rounded bases through the long bodies and ringed necks toward the intensely expressive faces. Repetition strengthens their presence: viewed together, the two figures establish a visual dialogue of similarity and difference, with the larger work expanding the basic form through the incorporation of the miniature figure.
Within the broader artistic landscape of southwestern Benin, these works are therefore best understood as highly individualized ritual sculptures whose specific identity depends upon the supplied Fon and Comè attribution. More precise identification with a particular Vodun, shrine or ritual function would require additional information from the circumstances in which they were collected and used.
Selected Literature
Blier, Suzanne Preston. African Vodun: Art, Psychology, and Power. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1995.
Herskovits, Melville J. Dahomey: An Ancient West African Kingdom. New York: J. J. Augustin, 1938.
Bay, Edna G. Wives of the Leopard: Gender, Politics, and Culture in the Kingdom of Dahomey. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1998.
Preston Blier, Suzanne. “Vodun: West African Roots of Vodou.” In Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou, edited by Donald J. Cosentino. Los Angeles: UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History, 1995.
Some of the information and photos are generated by artificial intelligence and is based on published sources from the fields of ethnography, archaeology, and art history documents. All information and photos are protected by copyright.
Inv. No. MAZ30766
Informant: Wassiu.
Height: 83 cm / 92 cm
Weight: 2,8 kg / 3,5 kg (incl. stand)
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
Fon Pair of Anthropomorphic Ritual Figures, Comè Region, Benin
Fon, Comè region, southwestern Benin
Wood with intense blue pigment and ritual patina
This remarkable pair of tall anthropomorphic sculptures is characterized by extreme vertical elongation, an intense blue surface and a highly reduced treatment of the human body. Although closely related in conception and evidently conceived within the same sculptural vocabulary, the two figures differ significantly in size and detail. The larger example incorporates a small secondary figure within its body, introducing an additional level of symbolic complexity.
Both sculptures are organized around an elongated cylindrical axis. Small feet rise from rounded integral bases and support long, almost uninterrupted bodies. The shoulders and arms have largely disappeared as independent anatomical elements; instead, the torso has been transformed into a smooth vertical volume. Raised horizontal rings articulate the body at important transitional points, dividing it into successive zones and reinforcing the sculptures' rhythmic vertical construction.
The heads are disproportionately large and elongated. Each has a high rounded cranium, projecting circular eyes, a short horizontal nose and an open oval mouth with individually indicated teeth. Large circular forms on the cheeks or temples further animate the face. The combination of staring eyes and exposed teeth produces an intense expression that contrasts strongly with the static, almost columnar body.
The necks are exceptionally long and covered with vertical grooves. These incisions create a strong textural transition between the relatively smooth bodies and the sculpturally concentrated heads. The repeated ring-like bands beneath the neck and near the lower body act almost like collars, bracelets or structural joints, though their exact significance cannot be established from appearance alone.
The larger figure is particularly unusual. An elongated opening has been carved into the lower torso, and within this cavity stands a much smaller anthropomorphic figure. The secondary figure appears deliberately integrated into the sculpture rather than added independently. This figure-within-a-figure construction immediately suggests ideas of containment, protection, dependency, descent or generational continuity, but without field documentation its precise meaning should remain open.
The smaller sculpture lacks this internal figure and presents a more continuous body. The relationship between the two works is nevertheless unmistakable: the same elongated heads, circular eyes, projecting noses, exposed teeth, ringed transitions and intense blue pigmentation occur in both. They may have constituted complementary ritual objects, although it cannot be established from the photograph alone whether they originally functioned as a formal pair.
The blue coloration is one of their most visually compelling characteristics. Thick pigment covers almost every surface, while abrasion exposes darker and lighter passages beneath it. Cracking and irregular accumulation indicate successive surface histories rather than a perfectly uniform decorative coating. The exact composition of the pigment cannot be determined visually.
Regional characteristics
Comè lies in southwestern Benin, in a culturally complex area west of the principal historical centers of the Fon kingdom of Dahomey. The region is characterized by long-standing interaction among Fon and other Gbe-speaking communities, including groups commonly identified as Xwla, Xweda, Mina and related populations. Consequently, an attribution to “Fon, Comè region” should be understood as valuable local information rather than as evidence for a narrowly standardized Fon sculptural style.
This regional distinction is particularly important because the religious arts of southern Benin are extraordinarily diverse. Within Vodun traditions, anthropomorphic sculptures may serve very different purposes according to their shrine, owner, spiritual association and ritual treatment. Some become receptacles or material supports for spiritual forces; others relate to protection, divination, healing, fertility or ancestral relationships. Physical appearance alone is rarely sufficient to determine the exact category.
The intense blue pigment deserves similar caution. Color can be highly significant within the visual and ritual systems of southern Benin, but its meaning is contextual. It would therefore be inappropriate to identify these figures automatically with a particular Vodun solely because of their blue surface.
The smaller figure enclosed within the body of the larger sculpture is potentially more informative. Images incorporating secondary human figures can articulate relationships between different beings rather than simply depicting an isolated individual. In the present case, the enclosed figure may evoke offspring, an ancestor-descendant relationship, spiritual protection or the containment of another presence. The conspicuous cavity makes this relationship central to the sculpture's conception. Nevertheless, identifying it specifically as a maternity image would go beyond what can securely be established.
The pair also illustrates an important characteristic of the ritual arts of the Fon cultural sphere: sculptural power does not necessarily depend upon anatomical naturalism. Here the human body has been transformed almost into a ritual column. Facial features are concentrated at the summit, while the remainder of the figure becomes an elongated container-like form. The larger sculpture makes this concept of the body as container especially explicit through its open cavity and internal figure.
Their extraordinary proportions give the sculptures considerable monumentality. The narrow silhouettes direct the eye upward from the rounded bases through the long bodies and ringed necks toward the intensely expressive faces. Repetition strengthens their presence: viewed together, the two figures establish a visual dialogue of similarity and difference, with the larger work expanding the basic form through the incorporation of the miniature figure.
Within the broader artistic landscape of southwestern Benin, these works are therefore best understood as highly individualized ritual sculptures whose specific identity depends upon the supplied Fon and Comè attribution. More precise identification with a particular Vodun, shrine or ritual function would require additional information from the circumstances in which they were collected and used.
Selected Literature
Blier, Suzanne Preston. African Vodun: Art, Psychology, and Power. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1995.
Herskovits, Melville J. Dahomey: An Ancient West African Kingdom. New York: J. J. Augustin, 1938.
Bay, Edna G. Wives of the Leopard: Gender, Politics, and Culture in the Kingdom of Dahomey. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1998.
Preston Blier, Suzanne. “Vodun: West African Roots of Vodou.” In Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou, edited by Donald J. Cosentino. Los Angeles: UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History, 1995.
Some of the information and photos are generated by artificial intelligence and is based on published sources from the fields of ethnography, archaeology, and art history documents. All information and photos are protected by copyright.
Inv. No. MAZ30766
Informant: Wassiu.
Height: 83 cm / 92 cm
Weight: 2,8 kg / 3,5 kg (incl. stand)
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
Ethnic group/ culture
Fon
Country of Origin
Benin
Material
Wood
Sold with stand
Yes
Condition
Fair condition
Title of artwork
A wooden sculpture
Height
92 cm
Weight
6.3 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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