A wooden sculpture - Losso - Togo (No reserve price)
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A wooden sculpture from Northern Togo of the Losso (Naoudemba), original and official, 42 cm tall, about 1.3 kg, sold with a stand.
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Description from the seller
Sculpture Losso – Anthropomorphic Ancestor or Guardian Figure
Origin: Northern Togo
Cultural Attribution: Losso (Naoudemba), attributed
Material: Wood, carved, with a dark brown to blackish patina and inlaid cowrie shells, incl stand.
Description
This anthropomorphic wooden sculpture from northern Togo is characterized by unusual body proportions, an expressive facial design, and a remarkably dynamic stance. The upright figure has a large, almost spherical head resting on a short, sturdy neck. Particularly striking are the two light-colored cowrie shells, which serve as eyes in the dark facial surface. Their elongated, serrated openings create an intense, almost penetrating gaze and form a striking contrast to the dark-patinated wood surface. The nose is small and sculpted, while the mouth is suggested by a narrow, slightly protruding form. Large, disc-shaped ears protrude from the sides, the right ear, visible in the photograph, being particularly well-defined. The torso appears strikingly narrow and elongated. The shoulders are gently rounded, while the two arms hang almost parallel to the body. The hands are highly simplified and end in small, inward-pointing projections. In contrast to the slender torso, the figure has a strongly sculpted pelvis with clearly defined buttocks and thighs. The legs are positioned differently, conveying the impression of a striding movement. While one leg hangs relatively straight down, the other is distinctly bent and splayed out to the side. The feet are broad and simplified, with individual toes suggested by shallow incisions. The entire surface exhibits an irregular, dark brown to grayish-black patina with lighter areas of abrasion, fine cracks, and partial material loss. The natural wood tones are particularly prominent on the projecting parts of the body. The black presentation base is a later addition and not part of the original sculpture.
The legs are positioned differently, conveying the impression of a striding motion.
Cultural and Geographical Context
The Losso, also known as Naoudemba, are one of the ethnic groups of northern Togo. Their historical settlement areas are primarily located around Niamtougou and in adjacent parts of the present-day Kara region. This landscape forms a cultural transition zone between the northern savannah regions and the mountainous regions further south in Togo. The history of the Losso is characterized by close relationships with neighboring communities, including the Kabiyè, Lamba, and other ethnic groups, whose religious beliefs and material cultures overlap in various ways. Traditional religious practices include ancestor veneration, a relationship with local spiritual powers, and rituals that can serve to protect the family, promote fertility, and foster social cohesion. Figurative wooden sculptures are known within the broader cultural context of northern Togo and serve a variety of functions. They can be understood as material reference points between the living and the dead, as protective objects, or as components of religious installations. However, the specific religious and social functions of such objects cannot be deduced solely from their external form. For the present sculpture, a use in connection with ancestor or protective beliefs is conceivable, but this is not documented by information about its original location or ritual practice.
Symbolism and Ritual Function
The two cowrie shells, which serve as eyes in the head, are of particular iconographic significance. Cowrie shells have a long history in numerous West African societies as a means of payment, decorative elements, and bearers of symbolic meaning. They can be associated with prosperity, fertility, protection, and spiritual efficacy. Their use as eyes lends a special visual intensity to an anthropomorphic figure. In certain religious contexts, such eyes can be interpreted as an expression of supernatural perception or heightened vigilance. For the present object, however, this interpretation remains hypothetical. The combination of dark wood and light cowrie shells creates a striking physiognomic presence that makes the head the focal point of the entire composition. The unusual posture also deserves special attention. The asymmetrical position of the legs prevents the figure from appearing as a completely static standing image, but rather conveys a sense of movement reminiscent of a step or a deliberate shift in weight. The figure could be symbolically associated with activity, protectiveness, or the transition between different states. A purely sculptural explanation is also possible, in which the movement primarily serves to create a sense of physical life. The robust design of the pelvis and thighs could indicate a particular emphasis on physical strength. However, a definitive gender cannot be reliably determined from the visible anatomy. Without additional ethnographic documentation, it remains unclear whether the figure represents a specific personality, an ancestor, a spiritual authority, or a more general human type.
Art Historical Analysis
The sculpture is characterized by a dynamic interplay between geometric simplification and anatomical differentiation. While the head and torso form largely closed, compact volumes, the pelvis and legs develop a pronounced sculptural dynamism. This deliberate imbalance of the body parts lends the figure a distinctive artistic presence. The combination of a comparatively small, slender torso with a powerful lower body is particularly noteworthy. Due to its size and striking eyes, the head appears as the dominant element. The cowrie shells incorporated into the sculpture add an extra layer of material to the pure wood carving, creating a striking contrast between organically rounded forms and the precise, natural structure of the shells. This gives the face an expressive quality that transcends mere naturalistic representation. The laterally protruding ears emphasize the horizontal extension of the head and contrast with the vertical orientation of the body. Within the figurative wood carving tradition of northern Togo, various forms of anatomical reduction and the deliberate exaggeration of individual body parts are encountered. The present figure can be placed within this broader context, although a definitive attribution to a specific local workshop or individual sculptor is not possible. Its pronounced leg position distinguishes it from numerous strictly frontal and symmetrically designed ancestral figures of the West African savanna belt. The impression of striding movement arises particularly from the varying angles of the legs and the asymmetrical distribution of body mass. This design lends the figure a liveliness that contrasts with the concentrated, almost immobile expressiveness of the face.
Art Historical Assessment
The exceptional quality of this sculpture attributed to Losso lies in the combination of expressive physiognomy, material-based design, and an unusually dynamic body composition. The cowrie shell eyes lend the head a haunting presence, while the powerful legs and asymmetrical posture create a dynamic tension. The dark patinated, partially worn surface underscores the sculptural character of the wood and reveals traces of its working and subsequent alterations. Within the diverse sculptural traditions of northern Togo, the figure represents a remarkable example of the artistic condensation of the human form. Its impact is not based on anatomical accuracy, but rather on the deliberate accentuation of individual body zones and the expressive power of a few characteristic features. While the cultural attribution to Losso appears plausible based on the available provenance, it should be considered provisional given the stylistic overlaps with neighboring traditions. Dating and original ritual function also remain unclear without further documentation.
Literature
Christopher D. Roy: Art and Life in Africa. University of Iowa, Iowa City, 1992. General comparative literature on African sculpture traditions and their social functions.
Suzanne Preston Blier: African Vodun: Art, Psychology, and Power. University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1995. Comparative study of religious imagery and material cult objects in West Africa.
The publications mentioned serve as general art historical and religious ethnological contextualization. They do not constitute direct documentation of the sculpture in question or confirmation of its attribution to the Losso people.
Copyright and Scientific Documentation
Some of the information and photographs have been generated with the assistance of artificial intelligence and are based on published sources in ethnography, archaeology, and art history. Original texts and photographs may be protected by copyright. All rights held by the respective copyright holders are reserved.
Inv. No. MAZ31051
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
Sculpture Losso – Anthropomorphic Ancestor or Guardian Figure
Origin: Northern Togo
Cultural Attribution: Losso (Naoudemba), attributed
Material: Wood, carved, with a dark brown to blackish patina and inlaid cowrie shells, incl stand.
Description
This anthropomorphic wooden sculpture from northern Togo is characterized by unusual body proportions, an expressive facial design, and a remarkably dynamic stance. The upright figure has a large, almost spherical head resting on a short, sturdy neck. Particularly striking are the two light-colored cowrie shells, which serve as eyes in the dark facial surface. Their elongated, serrated openings create an intense, almost penetrating gaze and form a striking contrast to the dark-patinated wood surface. The nose is small and sculpted, while the mouth is suggested by a narrow, slightly protruding form. Large, disc-shaped ears protrude from the sides, the right ear, visible in the photograph, being particularly well-defined. The torso appears strikingly narrow and elongated. The shoulders are gently rounded, while the two arms hang almost parallel to the body. The hands are highly simplified and end in small, inward-pointing projections. In contrast to the slender torso, the figure has a strongly sculpted pelvis with clearly defined buttocks and thighs. The legs are positioned differently, conveying the impression of a striding movement. While one leg hangs relatively straight down, the other is distinctly bent and splayed out to the side. The feet are broad and simplified, with individual toes suggested by shallow incisions. The entire surface exhibits an irregular, dark brown to grayish-black patina with lighter areas of abrasion, fine cracks, and partial material loss. The natural wood tones are particularly prominent on the projecting parts of the body. The black presentation base is a later addition and not part of the original sculpture.
The legs are positioned differently, conveying the impression of a striding motion.
Cultural and Geographical Context
The Losso, also known as Naoudemba, are one of the ethnic groups of northern Togo. Their historical settlement areas are primarily located around Niamtougou and in adjacent parts of the present-day Kara region. This landscape forms a cultural transition zone between the northern savannah regions and the mountainous regions further south in Togo. The history of the Losso is characterized by close relationships with neighboring communities, including the Kabiyè, Lamba, and other ethnic groups, whose religious beliefs and material cultures overlap in various ways. Traditional religious practices include ancestor veneration, a relationship with local spiritual powers, and rituals that can serve to protect the family, promote fertility, and foster social cohesion. Figurative wooden sculptures are known within the broader cultural context of northern Togo and serve a variety of functions. They can be understood as material reference points between the living and the dead, as protective objects, or as components of religious installations. However, the specific religious and social functions of such objects cannot be deduced solely from their external form. For the present sculpture, a use in connection with ancestor or protective beliefs is conceivable, but this is not documented by information about its original location or ritual practice.
Symbolism and Ritual Function
The two cowrie shells, which serve as eyes in the head, are of particular iconographic significance. Cowrie shells have a long history in numerous West African societies as a means of payment, decorative elements, and bearers of symbolic meaning. They can be associated with prosperity, fertility, protection, and spiritual efficacy. Their use as eyes lends a special visual intensity to an anthropomorphic figure. In certain religious contexts, such eyes can be interpreted as an expression of supernatural perception or heightened vigilance. For the present object, however, this interpretation remains hypothetical. The combination of dark wood and light cowrie shells creates a striking physiognomic presence that makes the head the focal point of the entire composition. The unusual posture also deserves special attention. The asymmetrical position of the legs prevents the figure from appearing as a completely static standing image, but rather conveys a sense of movement reminiscent of a step or a deliberate shift in weight. The figure could be symbolically associated with activity, protectiveness, or the transition between different states. A purely sculptural explanation is also possible, in which the movement primarily serves to create a sense of physical life. The robust design of the pelvis and thighs could indicate a particular emphasis on physical strength. However, a definitive gender cannot be reliably determined from the visible anatomy. Without additional ethnographic documentation, it remains unclear whether the figure represents a specific personality, an ancestor, a spiritual authority, or a more general human type.
Art Historical Analysis
The sculpture is characterized by a dynamic interplay between geometric simplification and anatomical differentiation. While the head and torso form largely closed, compact volumes, the pelvis and legs develop a pronounced sculptural dynamism. This deliberate imbalance of the body parts lends the figure a distinctive artistic presence. The combination of a comparatively small, slender torso with a powerful lower body is particularly noteworthy. Due to its size and striking eyes, the head appears as the dominant element. The cowrie shells incorporated into the sculpture add an extra layer of material to the pure wood carving, creating a striking contrast between organically rounded forms and the precise, natural structure of the shells. This gives the face an expressive quality that transcends mere naturalistic representation. The laterally protruding ears emphasize the horizontal extension of the head and contrast with the vertical orientation of the body. Within the figurative wood carving tradition of northern Togo, various forms of anatomical reduction and the deliberate exaggeration of individual body parts are encountered. The present figure can be placed within this broader context, although a definitive attribution to a specific local workshop or individual sculptor is not possible. Its pronounced leg position distinguishes it from numerous strictly frontal and symmetrically designed ancestral figures of the West African savanna belt. The impression of striding movement arises particularly from the varying angles of the legs and the asymmetrical distribution of body mass. This design lends the figure a liveliness that contrasts with the concentrated, almost immobile expressiveness of the face.
Art Historical Assessment
The exceptional quality of this sculpture attributed to Losso lies in the combination of expressive physiognomy, material-based design, and an unusually dynamic body composition. The cowrie shell eyes lend the head a haunting presence, while the powerful legs and asymmetrical posture create a dynamic tension. The dark patinated, partially worn surface underscores the sculptural character of the wood and reveals traces of its working and subsequent alterations. Within the diverse sculptural traditions of northern Togo, the figure represents a remarkable example of the artistic condensation of the human form. Its impact is not based on anatomical accuracy, but rather on the deliberate accentuation of individual body zones and the expressive power of a few characteristic features. While the cultural attribution to Losso appears plausible based on the available provenance, it should be considered provisional given the stylistic overlaps with neighboring traditions. Dating and original ritual function also remain unclear without further documentation.
Literature
Christopher D. Roy: Art and Life in Africa. University of Iowa, Iowa City, 1992. General comparative literature on African sculpture traditions and their social functions.
Suzanne Preston Blier: African Vodun: Art, Psychology, and Power. University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1995. Comparative study of religious imagery and material cult objects in West Africa.
The publications mentioned serve as general art historical and religious ethnological contextualization. They do not constitute direct documentation of the sculpture in question or confirmation of its attribution to the Losso people.
Copyright and Scientific Documentation
Some of the information and photographs have been generated with the assistance of artificial intelligence and are based on published sources in ethnography, archaeology, and art history. Original texts and photographs may be protected by copyright. All rights held by the respective copyright holders are reserved.
Inv. No. MAZ31051
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
Losso
Country of Origin
Togo
Material
Wood
Sold with stand
Yes
Condition
Fair condition
Title of artwork
A wooden sculpture
Height
42 cm
Weight
1.3 kg
Authenticity
Original/official
Sold by
GermanyVerified
protop
Rechtliche Informationen des Verkäufers
- Unternehmen:
- Jaenicke Njoya GmbH
- Repräsentant:
- Wolfgang Jaenicke
- Adresse:
- Jaenicke Njoya GmbH
Klausenerplatz 7
14059 Berlin
GERMANY - Telefonnummer:
- +493033951033
- Email:
- w.jaenicke@jaenicke-njoya.com
- USt-IdNr.:
- DE241193499
AGB
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Widerrufsbelehrung
- Frist: 14 Tage sowie gemäß den hier angegebenen Bedingungen
- Rücksendkosten: Käufer trägt die unmittelbaren Kosten der Rücksendung der Ware
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