A wooden sculpture - Lobi - Burkina Faso (No reserve price)
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A wooden sculpture from Burkina Faso by the Lobi in the Gaoua region, titled “A wooden sculpture,” with a dark, partly encrusted surface; 29 cm high, 740 g, in fair condition, depicting a seated bateba-type figure.
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Description from the seller
Lobi Seated Figure, Gaoua Region, Burkina Faso
Lobi, Gaoua region, southwestern Burkina Faso
Wood with dark, partly encrusted surface
This highly expressive seated figure from the Gaoua region belongs to the sculptural traditions generally associated with Lobi bateba figures. Unlike the more familiar upright examples, the figure is represented in a strongly articulated seated position, with bent legs projecting forward and two dramatically differentiated arm gestures. The unusual posture gives the sculpture a remarkable psychological and physical intensity.
The figure is constructed around a compact vertical torso rising above the bent legs. The thighs project forward from the body before the lower legs descend almost vertically toward the broad feet. Rather than being represented on a separate stool, the seated position appears to be created by the geometry of the body itself. Seen in profile, this produces a powerful succession of angular forms: torso, thighs, knees, lower legs and feet.
The upper body is dominated by the arms. One arm bends upward beside the head, terminating in an elongated hand or pointed form held close to the face. The opposite arm describes a broad curve downward across the front of the body, with the hand apparently resting near the abdomen or upper thigh. This asymmetry transforms the figure from a static image into one defined by gesture.
The head is comparatively large and rounded, with a high forehead and restrained facial features. The eyes are indicated beneath gently modeled brows, while the nose and mouth project only slightly from the facial plane. There is little attempt at individualized portraiture. Instead, the simplified face contributes to the concentrated, inward character of the sculpture.
The surface is dark and irregular, with greyish and lighter deposits distributed over the head, shoulders, arms and legs. Areas of abrasion reveal the underlying wood, while recessed passages retain thicker accumulations. Such surfaces are compatible with the prolonged ritual lives of Lobi shrine figures, which could receive offerings and other substances. From the photograph alone, however, the precise origin of these deposits cannot be determined.
Regional characteristics
Gaoua lies at the heart of the Lobi cultural area of southwestern Burkina Faso, close to the borders with Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana. This wider region is inhabited by Lobi and culturally related communities whose religious practices historically centered upon relationships between human beings and invisible spiritual powers known as thila, singular thil.
Anthropomorphic wooden sculptures commonly known as bateba formed an important part of this religious environment. They could be installed in domestic or other shrines and understood as active intermediaries associated with thila. Their significance therefore extended far beyond representation: within their original context, such sculptures participated in systems concerned with protection, misfortune, illness, social relationships and the maintenance of spiritual equilibrium.
An especially important characteristic of Lobi sculpture is the extraordinary variety of bodily postures. While many bateba stand frontally with their arms close to the body, others raise their arms, turn their heads, sit, embrace, display unusual anatomical features or assume gestures associated in the literature with particular conditions or protective capacities.
The posture of the present sculpture is consequently highly significant. Its seated position and raised hand place it outside the most neutral standing type. Published classifications of Lobi sculpture distinguish several categories according to bodily attitude, including seated figures and figures expressing particular emotional or protective states. The terminology applied to individual examples, however, is not always consistent, and an exact ritual category should not be assigned solely on visual evidence.
The raised arm deserves particular caution. In discussions of Lobi sculpture, elevated arms are sometimes associated with figures intended to counter threatening forces, while other unusual gestures have been interpreted in relation to suffering, mourning or the transfer of undesirable conditions away from human beings. Yet the present figure combines a raised arm with a seated posture in a particularly individual manner. It would therefore be too restrictive to identify it automatically with one named bateba subtype.
This individuality is characteristic of Lobi sculpture more generally. There was no single centralized Lobi court or workshop imposing a uniform sculptural canon. Carvers developed highly personal solutions within a shared religious and formal vocabulary. Consequently, figures from the Gaoua region can vary dramatically in proportions, facial treatment, gesture and degree of abstraction.
The present sculpture is an especially compelling example of this freedom. Its power does not depend upon anatomical naturalism. The oversized feet anchor the figure physically, the sharply bent knees establish the seated position, and the sweeping arms concentrate attention around the torso and head. The upward-pointing hand creates the strongest accent of the entire composition.
Seen from the side, the sculpture is almost calligraphic. The body is constructed through a succession of curves and counter-curves, culminating in the narrow vertical gesture beside the face. This gives the work a sense of arrested movement—as though an action or gesture had been permanently fixed in wood.
Without documentation concerning the original shrine and circumstances of collection, the figure is best described as a Lobi seated bateba-type figure rather than assigned to a narrowly defined ritual category. Its unusual posture, strongly differentiated gestures and worn, accumulated surface nevertheless place it convincingly within the rich sculptural traditions centered on Gaoua and the wider Lobi region.
Selected Literature
Meyer, Piet. Kunst und Religion der Lobi. Zürich: Museum Rietberg, 1981.
Bognolo, Daniela. Lobi. Milan: 5 Continents Editions, 2007.
Himmelheber, Hans. “Figuren und Schnitztechnik bei den Lobi, Elfenbeinküste.” Tribus 15, 1966.
Massa, Gabriel, and Jean-Claude Lauret. Sculptures des trois Volta. Saint-Maur: Sépia, 2001.
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. MAZ31114
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
Lobi Seated Figure, Gaoua Region, Burkina Faso
Lobi, Gaoua region, southwestern Burkina Faso
Wood with dark, partly encrusted surface
This highly expressive seated figure from the Gaoua region belongs to the sculptural traditions generally associated with Lobi bateba figures. Unlike the more familiar upright examples, the figure is represented in a strongly articulated seated position, with bent legs projecting forward and two dramatically differentiated arm gestures. The unusual posture gives the sculpture a remarkable psychological and physical intensity.
The figure is constructed around a compact vertical torso rising above the bent legs. The thighs project forward from the body before the lower legs descend almost vertically toward the broad feet. Rather than being represented on a separate stool, the seated position appears to be created by the geometry of the body itself. Seen in profile, this produces a powerful succession of angular forms: torso, thighs, knees, lower legs and feet.
The upper body is dominated by the arms. One arm bends upward beside the head, terminating in an elongated hand or pointed form held close to the face. The opposite arm describes a broad curve downward across the front of the body, with the hand apparently resting near the abdomen or upper thigh. This asymmetry transforms the figure from a static image into one defined by gesture.
The head is comparatively large and rounded, with a high forehead and restrained facial features. The eyes are indicated beneath gently modeled brows, while the nose and mouth project only slightly from the facial plane. There is little attempt at individualized portraiture. Instead, the simplified face contributes to the concentrated, inward character of the sculpture.
The surface is dark and irregular, with greyish and lighter deposits distributed over the head, shoulders, arms and legs. Areas of abrasion reveal the underlying wood, while recessed passages retain thicker accumulations. Such surfaces are compatible with the prolonged ritual lives of Lobi shrine figures, which could receive offerings and other substances. From the photograph alone, however, the precise origin of these deposits cannot be determined.
Regional characteristics
Gaoua lies at the heart of the Lobi cultural area of southwestern Burkina Faso, close to the borders with Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana. This wider region is inhabited by Lobi and culturally related communities whose religious practices historically centered upon relationships between human beings and invisible spiritual powers known as thila, singular thil.
Anthropomorphic wooden sculptures commonly known as bateba formed an important part of this religious environment. They could be installed in domestic or other shrines and understood as active intermediaries associated with thila. Their significance therefore extended far beyond representation: within their original context, such sculptures participated in systems concerned with protection, misfortune, illness, social relationships and the maintenance of spiritual equilibrium.
An especially important characteristic of Lobi sculpture is the extraordinary variety of bodily postures. While many bateba stand frontally with their arms close to the body, others raise their arms, turn their heads, sit, embrace, display unusual anatomical features or assume gestures associated in the literature with particular conditions or protective capacities.
The posture of the present sculpture is consequently highly significant. Its seated position and raised hand place it outside the most neutral standing type. Published classifications of Lobi sculpture distinguish several categories according to bodily attitude, including seated figures and figures expressing particular emotional or protective states. The terminology applied to individual examples, however, is not always consistent, and an exact ritual category should not be assigned solely on visual evidence.
The raised arm deserves particular caution. In discussions of Lobi sculpture, elevated arms are sometimes associated with figures intended to counter threatening forces, while other unusual gestures have been interpreted in relation to suffering, mourning or the transfer of undesirable conditions away from human beings. Yet the present figure combines a raised arm with a seated posture in a particularly individual manner. It would therefore be too restrictive to identify it automatically with one named bateba subtype.
This individuality is characteristic of Lobi sculpture more generally. There was no single centralized Lobi court or workshop imposing a uniform sculptural canon. Carvers developed highly personal solutions within a shared religious and formal vocabulary. Consequently, figures from the Gaoua region can vary dramatically in proportions, facial treatment, gesture and degree of abstraction.
The present sculpture is an especially compelling example of this freedom. Its power does not depend upon anatomical naturalism. The oversized feet anchor the figure physically, the sharply bent knees establish the seated position, and the sweeping arms concentrate attention around the torso and head. The upward-pointing hand creates the strongest accent of the entire composition.
Seen from the side, the sculpture is almost calligraphic. The body is constructed through a succession of curves and counter-curves, culminating in the narrow vertical gesture beside the face. This gives the work a sense of arrested movement—as though an action or gesture had been permanently fixed in wood.
Without documentation concerning the original shrine and circumstances of collection, the figure is best described as a Lobi seated bateba-type figure rather than assigned to a narrowly defined ritual category. Its unusual posture, strongly differentiated gestures and worn, accumulated surface nevertheless place it convincingly within the rich sculptural traditions centered on Gaoua and the wider Lobi region.
Selected Literature
Meyer, Piet. Kunst und Religion der Lobi. Zürich: Museum Rietberg, 1981.
Bognolo, Daniela. Lobi. Milan: 5 Continents Editions, 2007.
Himmelheber, Hans. “Figuren und Schnitztechnik bei den Lobi, Elfenbeinküste.” Tribus 15, 1966.
Massa, Gabriel, and Jean-Claude Lauret. Sculptures des trois Volta. Saint-Maur: Sépia, 2001.
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. MAZ31114
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
Lobi
Country of Origin
Burkina Faso
Material
Wood
Sold with stand
No
Condition
Fair condition
Title of artwork
A wooden sculpture
Height
29 cm
Weight
740 g
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
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