A wooden sculpture - Yoruba - Nigeria (No reserve price)
07
days
13
hours
15
minutes
30
seconds
Current bid
€ 1
No reserve price
Expert
Selected by Julien Gauthier
A decade of experience in historical arms, armour, and African art.
Estimate € 280 - € 350
 | €1 |
|---|
Catawiki Buyer Protection
Your payment’s safe with us until you receive your object.View details
Trustpilot 4.4 | 142824 reviews
Rated Excellent on Trustpilot.
A wooden sculpture from Nigeria’s Yoruba Ekiti region, titled "A wooden sculpture", weighing 6.2 kg, 25 cm high and 77 cm deep, in fair condition with a dark patina.
AI-assisted summary
Description from the seller
Yoruba Carved Figural Chest, Ekiti Region, Nigeria
Yoruba, Ekiti region, Nigeria
Wood with dark patina
This exceptional carved chest combines the practical form of a rectangular container with an extraordinarily elaborate sculptural program. The entire object has been transformed into a field of figuration: repeated human faces decorate the walls of the box, while the lid supports a dense ensemble of fully modeled human and animal figures. The distinction between container and sculpture is consequently almost dissolved.
The long side of the chest is organized as a rhythmic sequence of rectangular panels. Within each appears a frontal human face with prominent eyes, a long nose and projecting mouth. Narrow bands of finely incised geometric ornament separate the faces, while additional triangular and linear patterns frame the composition. Repetition creates a powerful visual rhythm and suggests that the faces form a collective rather than representing a single individual.
The lid is considerably more complex. Several human figures are arranged horizontally and in close physical interaction with one another and with animal forms. Bodies overlap, limbs cross neighboring figures, and curved sculptural elements rise above the surface. At either end, large human heads project beyond the rectangular outline of the chest, dramatically extending the composition into the surrounding space.
One of the most striking aspects of the work is this deliberate contrast between order and movement. The sides of the container are governed by strict repetition and geometric organization, whereas the sculptural group above is crowded, animated and irregular. The chest therefore establishes two distinct visual registers: an architectural lower section and an almost narrative upper world populated by human and animal beings.
The figures are carved with considerable attention to bodily and decorative detail. Hairstyles are rendered through repeated grooves and patterned passages; limbs are articulated by incised bands; and individual faces possess strongly projecting features. The sculptor repeatedly uses parallel hatching, cross-hatching and triangular ornament to enliven otherwise broad wooden surfaces.
The dark brown surface shows lighter areas along projecting edges and heavily exposed sections. The recesses preserve deeper coloration, increasing the legibility of the carving. The irregular wear along the edges of the lid and box suggests a history of handling and opening, although the original contents and exact circumstances of use cannot be established from the photograph alone.
Regional characteristics
The attribution to Ekiti places the chest within one of the most important sculptural regions of northeastern Yorubaland. Ekiti communities developed particularly rich traditions of architectural and figurative woodcarving, including palace posts, doors, veranda posts, bowls, containers and objects associated with shrines and chiefly institutions.
Ekiti carving is notable for the prominence of complex multi-figure compositions. Sculptors frequently organized figures hierarchically or combined human beings with animals, attendants and symbolic motifs. Architectural carving offered especially extensive surfaces on which such compositions could develop, and the densely populated lid of the present chest reflects a comparable approach on a smaller scale.
The repeated frontal heads along the walls are particularly interesting in a Yoruba context. The head, ori, occupies a central position in Yoruba conceptions of personhood. It is not merely an anatomical component but is closely associated with individual identity, destiny and spiritual potential. Nevertheless, the presence of numerous heads on this particular chest should not automatically be assigned a specific religious meaning without information concerning its original context.
Likewise, the complex figural scene on the lid may once have communicated a recognizable narrative, proverb, historical episode or social relationship. Yoruba sculpture frequently employs gesture, hierarchy, costume and relationships between figures to convey meaning. When such objects have become separated from their original oral documentation, however, precise readings can easily become speculative.
The chest form itself deserves attention. Containers could acquire considerable significance through what they held and through the social position of their owners. In Yoruba artistic traditions, elaborately carved receptacles might be associated with prestige, ritual materials or valued personal possessions. The complexity of the present carving strongly suggests that the container was intended to possess a significance beyond ordinary storage, although its specific contents cannot be reconstructed from appearance alone.
The Ekiti attribution is particularly valuable because the region produced a number of historically documented carving centers and individual master sculptors. Among the best known are artists associated with Areogun of Osi-Ilorin and other northeastern Yoruba workshops, whose works demonstrate the extraordinary narrative possibilities of carved wood. It would, however, be inappropriate to attribute the present chest to a particular named workshop solely on stylistic resemblance.
Perhaps the most distinctive feature of this work is the way sculpture completely envelops an otherwise simple architectural volume. The repeated faces transform the walls into a continuous human presence, while the figures above turn the lid into a sculptural stage. The chest can consequently be appreciated simultaneously as a functional container, an exercise in complex relief carving and an unusually ambitious example of Yoruba narrative sculpture.
Selected Literature
Drewal, Henry John, John Pemberton III and Rowland Abiodun. Yoruba: Nine Centuries of African Art and Thought. New York: Center for African Art, 1989.
Fagg, William, and John Pemberton III. Yoruba: Sculpture of West Africa. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982.
Carroll, Kevin. Yoruba Religious Carving: Pagan and Christian Sculpture in Nigeria and Dahomey. London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1967.
Abiodun, Rowland. Yoruba Art and Language: Seeking the African in African Art. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014.
Thompson, Robert Farris. Black Gods and Kings: Yoruba Art at UCLA. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1971.
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. MAZ30832
Informant: Doku
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
Yoruba Carved Figural Chest, Ekiti Region, Nigeria
Yoruba, Ekiti region, Nigeria
Wood with dark patina
This exceptional carved chest combines the practical form of a rectangular container with an extraordinarily elaborate sculptural program. The entire object has been transformed into a field of figuration: repeated human faces decorate the walls of the box, while the lid supports a dense ensemble of fully modeled human and animal figures. The distinction between container and sculpture is consequently almost dissolved.
The long side of the chest is organized as a rhythmic sequence of rectangular panels. Within each appears a frontal human face with prominent eyes, a long nose and projecting mouth. Narrow bands of finely incised geometric ornament separate the faces, while additional triangular and linear patterns frame the composition. Repetition creates a powerful visual rhythm and suggests that the faces form a collective rather than representing a single individual.
The lid is considerably more complex. Several human figures are arranged horizontally and in close physical interaction with one another and with animal forms. Bodies overlap, limbs cross neighboring figures, and curved sculptural elements rise above the surface. At either end, large human heads project beyond the rectangular outline of the chest, dramatically extending the composition into the surrounding space.
One of the most striking aspects of the work is this deliberate contrast between order and movement. The sides of the container are governed by strict repetition and geometric organization, whereas the sculptural group above is crowded, animated and irregular. The chest therefore establishes two distinct visual registers: an architectural lower section and an almost narrative upper world populated by human and animal beings.
The figures are carved with considerable attention to bodily and decorative detail. Hairstyles are rendered through repeated grooves and patterned passages; limbs are articulated by incised bands; and individual faces possess strongly projecting features. The sculptor repeatedly uses parallel hatching, cross-hatching and triangular ornament to enliven otherwise broad wooden surfaces.
The dark brown surface shows lighter areas along projecting edges and heavily exposed sections. The recesses preserve deeper coloration, increasing the legibility of the carving. The irregular wear along the edges of the lid and box suggests a history of handling and opening, although the original contents and exact circumstances of use cannot be established from the photograph alone.
Regional characteristics
The attribution to Ekiti places the chest within one of the most important sculptural regions of northeastern Yorubaland. Ekiti communities developed particularly rich traditions of architectural and figurative woodcarving, including palace posts, doors, veranda posts, bowls, containers and objects associated with shrines and chiefly institutions.
Ekiti carving is notable for the prominence of complex multi-figure compositions. Sculptors frequently organized figures hierarchically or combined human beings with animals, attendants and symbolic motifs. Architectural carving offered especially extensive surfaces on which such compositions could develop, and the densely populated lid of the present chest reflects a comparable approach on a smaller scale.
The repeated frontal heads along the walls are particularly interesting in a Yoruba context. The head, ori, occupies a central position in Yoruba conceptions of personhood. It is not merely an anatomical component but is closely associated with individual identity, destiny and spiritual potential. Nevertheless, the presence of numerous heads on this particular chest should not automatically be assigned a specific religious meaning without information concerning its original context.
Likewise, the complex figural scene on the lid may once have communicated a recognizable narrative, proverb, historical episode or social relationship. Yoruba sculpture frequently employs gesture, hierarchy, costume and relationships between figures to convey meaning. When such objects have become separated from their original oral documentation, however, precise readings can easily become speculative.
The chest form itself deserves attention. Containers could acquire considerable significance through what they held and through the social position of their owners. In Yoruba artistic traditions, elaborately carved receptacles might be associated with prestige, ritual materials or valued personal possessions. The complexity of the present carving strongly suggests that the container was intended to possess a significance beyond ordinary storage, although its specific contents cannot be reconstructed from appearance alone.
The Ekiti attribution is particularly valuable because the region produced a number of historically documented carving centers and individual master sculptors. Among the best known are artists associated with Areogun of Osi-Ilorin and other northeastern Yoruba workshops, whose works demonstrate the extraordinary narrative possibilities of carved wood. It would, however, be inappropriate to attribute the present chest to a particular named workshop solely on stylistic resemblance.
Perhaps the most distinctive feature of this work is the way sculpture completely envelops an otherwise simple architectural volume. The repeated faces transform the walls into a continuous human presence, while the figures above turn the lid into a sculptural stage. The chest can consequently be appreciated simultaneously as a functional container, an exercise in complex relief carving and an unusually ambitious example of Yoruba narrative sculpture.
Selected Literature
Drewal, Henry John, John Pemberton III and Rowland Abiodun. Yoruba: Nine Centuries of African Art and Thought. New York: Center for African Art, 1989.
Fagg, William, and John Pemberton III. Yoruba: Sculpture of West Africa. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982.
Carroll, Kevin. Yoruba Religious Carving: Pagan and Christian Sculpture in Nigeria and Dahomey. London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1967.
Abiodun, Rowland. Yoruba Art and Language: Seeking the African in African Art. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014.
Thompson, Robert Farris. Black Gods and Kings: Yoruba Art at UCLA. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1971.
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. MAZ30832
Informant: Doku
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
Yoruba
Country of Origin
Nigeria
Material
Wood
Sold with stand
No
Condition
Fair condition
Title of artwork
A wooden sculpture
Height
25 cm
Depth
77 cm
Weight
6.2 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
AGB des Verkäufers. Mit einem Gebot auf dieses Los akzeptieren Sie ebenfalls die AGB des Verkäufers.
Widerrufsbelehrung
- Frist: 14 Tage sowie gemäß den hier angegebenen Bedingungen
- Rücksendkosten: Käufer trägt die unmittelbaren Kosten der Rücksendung der Ware
- Vollständige Widerrufsbelehrung
