A bronze sculpture - Vere - Nigeria (No reserve price)
08
days
05
hours
38
minutes
17
seconds
Starting bid
€ 1
No reserve price
Expert
Selected by Julien Gauthier
A decade of experience in historical arms, armour, and African art.
Estimate € 200 - € 250
No bids placed
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 bronze sculpture from Nigeria by the Vere (Verre) people, titled 'A bronze sculpture', with provenance from the Jimeta region in Adamawa State.
AI-assisted summary
Description from the seller
Vere Bronze Couple, Jimeta Region, Nigeria
Vere (Verre), Jimeta region, Adamawa State, Nigeria
Cast copper alloy
This remarkable pair of standing male and female figures belongs to the distinctive copper-alloy casting tradition of the Vere, or Verre, of northeastern Nigeria. Although the two sculptures differ in height, coiffure and anatomical details, they share a closely related formal vocabulary and appear conceived as complementary figures. Their elongated bodies, prominent facial features, extensive jewelry and carefully articulated ornaments create images in which social identity and bodily adornment are given exceptional prominence.
The taller figure has a slender body surmounted by a disproportionately large head. A high conical coiffure or headdress rises from the crown in several horizontal registers and terminates in a rounded point. The face is strongly modeled, with large circular eyes, a broad projecting nose, prominent lips and conspicuous ears. The head is tilted slightly upward, giving the figure an alert and commanding presence.
A long ornament descends over the chest and terminates in a circular element at the abdomen. Additional projections at the shoulders and bands around the upper arms, knees and ankles contribute to the figure's elaborate appearance. The arms hang close to the sides, with the hands carefully differentiated into individual fingers.
The shorter figure provides an intriguing counterpart. Its head is crowned by a series of small pointed projections arranged around the upper perimeter, producing an almost radiating silhouette. The large eyes, projecting mouth and prominent ears closely correspond to the facial conception of the taller figure, yet the treatment of the head gives this sculpture an unmistakably individual character.
The breasts identify the smaller figure as female. Two elongated oval ornaments appear on the upper chest, while bracelets encircle the wrists. As on the male figure, the knees are marked by circular motifs. Both sculptures display additional projecting elements near the ankles, whose exact significance is difficult to determine from the photograph alone.
The figures are strikingly frontal. Their long legs terminate in broad, flattened feet that provide visual stability, while the narrow torsos direct attention upward toward the enlarged heads. The relative disproportion between head and body is deliberate and contributes strongly to their sculptural presence.
The metal surfaces range from deep brown to almost black, with scattered green oxidation and warmer copper-colored passages appearing on projecting details. The precise composition of the alloys cannot be established visually, making “copper alloy” more appropriate than a specific metallurgical identification.
Regional characteristics
The Vere, generally referred to as Verre in specialist literature, live principally in the Adamawa region of northeastern Nigeria and adjacent Cameroon. Their territory lies within an exceptionally diverse cultural environment where communities including Chamba, Bata, Mumuye and numerous smaller groups have interacted over long periods. The recorded attribution to the Jimeta region therefore places the pair within an important zone of cultural exchange.
Among the most distinctive features of Verre material culture is a sophisticated tradition of copper-alloy working. Verre smiths and casters produced personal ornaments, bells, weapons, ritual objects and anthropomorphic figures. Metal ornaments could function as visible indications of wealth and social position, making the extensive representation of jewelry on these figures particularly significant.
The present pair emphasizes precisely this relationship between body and ornament. Necklaces, bracelets, armlets, anklets and other modeled accessories are not secondary additions. They structure the bodies visually and divide the elongated figures into successive zones. The tall headdress of the male and the radiating coiffure of the female further differentiate their identities.
The representation of a male and female figure as a complementary pair may suggest ideas of social partnership, marriage, ancestry or gendered status. Nevertheless, it would be premature to identify them specifically as an ancestral couple or marriage pair without field documentation. Their relationship is visually persuasive, but the original ritual or social function of Vere anthropomorphic bronzes is not sufficiently uniform to allow a precise interpretation from appearance alone.
Of particular interest are the unusual projecting forms at the ankles. Comparable details in regional metal sculpture can represent ornaments or other attached elements, but their exact identification here remains uncertain. Their repetition on both figures indicates that they were intentional components of the figures' appearance rather than incidental casting features.
The Jimeta attribution should also be understood geographically. Jimeta, now part of the Yola metropolitan area, lies within the broader Adamawa cultural landscape. It should not automatically be interpreted as defining a separate “Jimeta style.” The more meaningful context is the wider Verre artistic environment and its interaction with neighboring peoples.
Stylistically, the pair demonstrates the distinctive expressive possibilities of lost-wax casting. Thin limbs, projecting ears, elaborate headdresses and numerous small ornaments could all be modeled directly in wax before casting. Subtle differences between the two figures are therefore significant: each sculpture was individually conceived rather than mechanically reproduced.
The visual strength of the pair lies ultimately in the tension between similarity and difference. Both share the same elongated anatomy, enlarged head, prominent eyes and mouth, broad feet and profusion of ornaments, yet each possesses a distinct identity. Presented together, they form a particularly compelling expression of Vere figurative metalwork and of the importance accorded to personal adornment and social presence in the artistic traditions of the Adamawa region.
Selected Literature
Fardon, Richard, Christine Stelzig and Klaus Piepel. Surviving Works: Context in Verre Arts. A major study of Verre material culture, particularly relevant to brass casting, personal ornament and anthropomorphic sculpture.
Berns, Marla C., Richard Fardon and Sidney Littlefield Kasfir, eds. Central Nigeria Unmasked: Arts of the Benue River Valley. Los Angeles: Fowler Museum at UCLA, 2011.
Fardon, Richard. Between God, the Dead and the Wild: Chamba Interpretations of Ritual and Religion. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1990. Useful for the broader cultural and ritual environment of the Nigeria-Cameroon borderlands.
Fardon, Richard. “Verre Art.” In studies devoted to the arts and material culture of the Adamawa region. Particularly relevant for understanding the distinctive position of Verre metalworking within northeastern Nigeria.
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. MAZ30953
Informant: Amadou Dogo
Height: 32 cm / 25 cm
Weight: 1,4 kg / 850 g
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
Vere Bronze Couple, Jimeta Region, Nigeria
Vere (Verre), Jimeta region, Adamawa State, Nigeria
Cast copper alloy
This remarkable pair of standing male and female figures belongs to the distinctive copper-alloy casting tradition of the Vere, or Verre, of northeastern Nigeria. Although the two sculptures differ in height, coiffure and anatomical details, they share a closely related formal vocabulary and appear conceived as complementary figures. Their elongated bodies, prominent facial features, extensive jewelry and carefully articulated ornaments create images in which social identity and bodily adornment are given exceptional prominence.
The taller figure has a slender body surmounted by a disproportionately large head. A high conical coiffure or headdress rises from the crown in several horizontal registers and terminates in a rounded point. The face is strongly modeled, with large circular eyes, a broad projecting nose, prominent lips and conspicuous ears. The head is tilted slightly upward, giving the figure an alert and commanding presence.
A long ornament descends over the chest and terminates in a circular element at the abdomen. Additional projections at the shoulders and bands around the upper arms, knees and ankles contribute to the figure's elaborate appearance. The arms hang close to the sides, with the hands carefully differentiated into individual fingers.
The shorter figure provides an intriguing counterpart. Its head is crowned by a series of small pointed projections arranged around the upper perimeter, producing an almost radiating silhouette. The large eyes, projecting mouth and prominent ears closely correspond to the facial conception of the taller figure, yet the treatment of the head gives this sculpture an unmistakably individual character.
The breasts identify the smaller figure as female. Two elongated oval ornaments appear on the upper chest, while bracelets encircle the wrists. As on the male figure, the knees are marked by circular motifs. Both sculptures display additional projecting elements near the ankles, whose exact significance is difficult to determine from the photograph alone.
The figures are strikingly frontal. Their long legs terminate in broad, flattened feet that provide visual stability, while the narrow torsos direct attention upward toward the enlarged heads. The relative disproportion between head and body is deliberate and contributes strongly to their sculptural presence.
The metal surfaces range from deep brown to almost black, with scattered green oxidation and warmer copper-colored passages appearing on projecting details. The precise composition of the alloys cannot be established visually, making “copper alloy” more appropriate than a specific metallurgical identification.
Regional characteristics
The Vere, generally referred to as Verre in specialist literature, live principally in the Adamawa region of northeastern Nigeria and adjacent Cameroon. Their territory lies within an exceptionally diverse cultural environment where communities including Chamba, Bata, Mumuye and numerous smaller groups have interacted over long periods. The recorded attribution to the Jimeta region therefore places the pair within an important zone of cultural exchange.
Among the most distinctive features of Verre material culture is a sophisticated tradition of copper-alloy working. Verre smiths and casters produced personal ornaments, bells, weapons, ritual objects and anthropomorphic figures. Metal ornaments could function as visible indications of wealth and social position, making the extensive representation of jewelry on these figures particularly significant.
The present pair emphasizes precisely this relationship between body and ornament. Necklaces, bracelets, armlets, anklets and other modeled accessories are not secondary additions. They structure the bodies visually and divide the elongated figures into successive zones. The tall headdress of the male and the radiating coiffure of the female further differentiate their identities.
The representation of a male and female figure as a complementary pair may suggest ideas of social partnership, marriage, ancestry or gendered status. Nevertheless, it would be premature to identify them specifically as an ancestral couple or marriage pair without field documentation. Their relationship is visually persuasive, but the original ritual or social function of Vere anthropomorphic bronzes is not sufficiently uniform to allow a precise interpretation from appearance alone.
Of particular interest are the unusual projecting forms at the ankles. Comparable details in regional metal sculpture can represent ornaments or other attached elements, but their exact identification here remains uncertain. Their repetition on both figures indicates that they were intentional components of the figures' appearance rather than incidental casting features.
The Jimeta attribution should also be understood geographically. Jimeta, now part of the Yola metropolitan area, lies within the broader Adamawa cultural landscape. It should not automatically be interpreted as defining a separate “Jimeta style.” The more meaningful context is the wider Verre artistic environment and its interaction with neighboring peoples.
Stylistically, the pair demonstrates the distinctive expressive possibilities of lost-wax casting. Thin limbs, projecting ears, elaborate headdresses and numerous small ornaments could all be modeled directly in wax before casting. Subtle differences between the two figures are therefore significant: each sculpture was individually conceived rather than mechanically reproduced.
The visual strength of the pair lies ultimately in the tension between similarity and difference. Both share the same elongated anatomy, enlarged head, prominent eyes and mouth, broad feet and profusion of ornaments, yet each possesses a distinct identity. Presented together, they form a particularly compelling expression of Vere figurative metalwork and of the importance accorded to personal adornment and social presence in the artistic traditions of the Adamawa region.
Selected Literature
Fardon, Richard, Christine Stelzig and Klaus Piepel. Surviving Works: Context in Verre Arts. A major study of Verre material culture, particularly relevant to brass casting, personal ornament and anthropomorphic sculpture.
Berns, Marla C., Richard Fardon and Sidney Littlefield Kasfir, eds. Central Nigeria Unmasked: Arts of the Benue River Valley. Los Angeles: Fowler Museum at UCLA, 2011.
Fardon, Richard. Between God, the Dead and the Wild: Chamba Interpretations of Ritual and Religion. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1990. Useful for the broader cultural and ritual environment of the Nigeria-Cameroon borderlands.
Fardon, Richard. “Verre Art.” In studies devoted to the arts and material culture of the Adamawa region. Particularly relevant for understanding the distinctive position of Verre metalworking within northeastern Nigeria.
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. MAZ30953
Informant: Amadou Dogo
Height: 32 cm / 25 cm
Weight: 1,4 kg / 850 g
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
Vere
Country of Origin
Nigeria
Material
Bronze
Sold with stand
No
Condition
Fair condition
Title of artwork
A bronze sculpture
Height
32 cm
Weight
2.25 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
