A wooden sculpture - Senufo - Côte d'Ivoire
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Selected by Dimitri André
Holds a postgraduate degree in African studies and 15 years experience in African art.
Estimate € 1,800 - € 2,000
 | €700 | |
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 | €650 | |
| €600 | |
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Original/official Senufo Déblé wooden rhythm pounder sculpture from Nafoun, Korhogo Region, Côte d'Ivoire; 119 cm high, 13 kg, with a black patina, cowrie shells and red seeds.
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Description from the seller
Senufo, Déblé (Rhytm Ponder), Ivory Cost, village of Nafoun, Korhogo Region, Northern Côte d'Ivoire. Wood, black patina, cowrie shells, red seeds.
This female Déblé ranks among the finest known examples of the monumental rhythm pounders created by the Senufo. Déblé were carried beneath the arms by members of the Poro society during funerary ceremonies and other important ritual occasions, where their massive cylindrical bases were rhythmically pounded against the ground. The resulting sound accompanied songs and dances while symbolically linking the community of the living with the ancestors and the earth. Functioning simultaneously as sculptural masterpieces and ritual instruments, Déblé represent one of the most distinctive sculptural traditions of Senufo art.
The present sculpture is distinguished by its remarkable vertical composition and the exceptional harmony of its proportions. A small, slightly forward-inclined head rests upon an unusually elongated cylindrical neck, lending the figure a dignified, almost contemplative presence. The elongated face is dominated by almond-shaped eyes inlaid with cowrie shells, whose half-closed appearance conveys a sense of quiet introspection. The straight nose and slightly parted mouth are reduced to a few essential forms, reinforcing the restrained monumentality of the facial expression. Broad, disc-shaped ears project prominently from either side of the head, creating a striking sculptural counterpoint to the narrow face.
The body follows a clear, almost architectural vertical axis. Gently rounded shoulders lead into a slender, nearly cylindrical torso whose anatomy has been deliberately reduced to its essential forms. Only the finely modelled breasts and delicate linear scarifications on either side of the chest articulate the smooth, polished surface. Exceptionally long arms describe elegant sweeping curves, bringing the hands together in front of the lower abdomen. Their broad palms, with parallel-incised fingers, rest upon the upper thighs and form the compositional centre of the sculpture. Short, powerful legs merge directly into the massive cylindrical base that enabled the figure to function as a rhythm pounder during ritual performances.
Particularly noteworthy is the superbly preserved handling patina on the neck, arms, and hands. The deep black surface, rendered silky and lustrous through decades of repeated contact, provides compelling evidence of prolonged ritual use and constitutes one of the sculpture's most significant historical attributes. The coiffure, adorned with small red seeds, together with matching ornaments around the neck and wrists, introduces subtle accents of colour that enhance the restrained elegance of the composition.
Stylistically, the sculpture bears an exceptionally close relationship to the Déblé illustrated as Figure 5.47 in Senufo Unbound: Dynamics of Art and Identity in West Africa (Cleveland Museum of Art). The two works share not merely the general characteristics of Senufo sculpture but a remarkable series of highly specific formal features: the diminutive head set upon an unusually elongated neck, almost identical body proportions, deeply curving elongated arms, prominent disc-shaped ears, the restrained modelling of the torso, the distinctive treatment of the hands, and an overall sense of quiet monumentality. Above all, the close correspondence in proportions, sculptural rhythm, and compositional balance extends well beyond what might be expected within a broader regional style.
These striking similarities strongly suggest that both sculptures originated within the same workshop tradition centred in the village of Nafoun. It is even conceivable that they were carved by the same sculptor or within the immediate circle of a single master. While such an attribution necessarily remains a stylistic hypothesis in the absence of documentary workshop evidence, it follows the well-established methodology of connoisseurship and workshop attribution that has long been employed in the study of African sculpture.
In this context, it seems appropriate to identify the stylistic group represented by the present sculpture and the example published in Senufo Unbound under the provisional designation "Master of Nafoun", or alternatively, the "Workshop of Figure 5.47." The present Déblé should be regarded as one of the finest works presently attributable to this anonymous master or his workshop. Its origin in the village of Nafoun has been independently confirmed by Belo Garba of Korhogo and Bakari Bouaflé of Abidjan. This rare convergence of local oral tradition and stylistic analysis considerably strengthens the proposed attribution and establishes the sculpture as an important reference work for the future study of regional carving ateliers among the Senufo.
Comparative Literature
McNaughton, Patrick R. (ed.), Senufo Unbound: Dynamics of Art and Identity in West Africa, Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, 2024, fig. 5.47.
Musée Fabre; Cleveland Museum; Wolfgang Jaenicke
Source: Susan Elisabeth Gagliardi, Cleveland Museum, Ohio, USA (last photo sequence). Senufo Unbound, plate 46/47 (mostly wellknown is the "Western Provenance", in the description we read "unknown artist". Perhaps one could say that this is a postcolonial, Western view of Africa, because the makers of these sculptures do not see themselves as "artists" in Africa. They are craftsmen, often blacksmiths, who, despite being integrated into village communities, usually live on the outskirts of the villages. Learning where these villages are and how the carvers influenced each other might say more about Africa than a "family tree" of Western owners. But that would mean that anthropologists do field research in Africa instead of running museums that are under the influence of the art trade.
Lit.: A lecture of Dr. Junker, "der Originalzustand.. Wo ist er geblieben?" Gottschalk Burkhard, "Senufo, Massa und die Statuen des poro" 2002: 43; Glaze Anita J., "Art and Death in a Senufo Village", Indiana University Press, Bloomington 1981. A related eyemplare: Robert Goldwater, Senufo Sculpture from West Africa, New York, 1964, ills. 88 and 88a, Werner Gillon, Collecting African Art, London, 1979, p. 50, fig. 38 William Rubin, "Primitivism" in 20th Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern, New York, 1984, vol. 1, p. 131 William Rubin, Le Primitivisme dans l’art du 20e siècle. Les artistes modernes devant l’art tribal, Paris, 1987, p. 131 Jacques Kerchache, Jean-Louis Paudrat and Lucien Stéphan, L'art africain, Paris, 1988, p. 82, pl. 34, Jacques Kerchache, Jean-Louis Paudrat, and Lucien Stéphan (eds.), Die Kunst des Schwarzen Afrika, Freiburg, 1989, p. 80, pl. 34 Jacques Kerchache, Jean-Louis Paudrat and Lucien Stéphan, Art of Africa, New York, 1993, p. 82, pl. 34 Mary H. Nooter, Secrecy: African Art that Conceals and Reveals, New York, 1993, p. 155, cat. 79.
Informant: Belo Garba et Bakari Bouaflé
Inv. No. MAZ18531
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
Senufo, Déblé (Rhytm Ponder), Ivory Cost, village of Nafoun, Korhogo Region, Northern Côte d'Ivoire. Wood, black patina, cowrie shells, red seeds.
This female Déblé ranks among the finest known examples of the monumental rhythm pounders created by the Senufo. Déblé were carried beneath the arms by members of the Poro society during funerary ceremonies and other important ritual occasions, where their massive cylindrical bases were rhythmically pounded against the ground. The resulting sound accompanied songs and dances while symbolically linking the community of the living with the ancestors and the earth. Functioning simultaneously as sculptural masterpieces and ritual instruments, Déblé represent one of the most distinctive sculptural traditions of Senufo art.
The present sculpture is distinguished by its remarkable vertical composition and the exceptional harmony of its proportions. A small, slightly forward-inclined head rests upon an unusually elongated cylindrical neck, lending the figure a dignified, almost contemplative presence. The elongated face is dominated by almond-shaped eyes inlaid with cowrie shells, whose half-closed appearance conveys a sense of quiet introspection. The straight nose and slightly parted mouth are reduced to a few essential forms, reinforcing the restrained monumentality of the facial expression. Broad, disc-shaped ears project prominently from either side of the head, creating a striking sculptural counterpoint to the narrow face.
The body follows a clear, almost architectural vertical axis. Gently rounded shoulders lead into a slender, nearly cylindrical torso whose anatomy has been deliberately reduced to its essential forms. Only the finely modelled breasts and delicate linear scarifications on either side of the chest articulate the smooth, polished surface. Exceptionally long arms describe elegant sweeping curves, bringing the hands together in front of the lower abdomen. Their broad palms, with parallel-incised fingers, rest upon the upper thighs and form the compositional centre of the sculpture. Short, powerful legs merge directly into the massive cylindrical base that enabled the figure to function as a rhythm pounder during ritual performances.
Particularly noteworthy is the superbly preserved handling patina on the neck, arms, and hands. The deep black surface, rendered silky and lustrous through decades of repeated contact, provides compelling evidence of prolonged ritual use and constitutes one of the sculpture's most significant historical attributes. The coiffure, adorned with small red seeds, together with matching ornaments around the neck and wrists, introduces subtle accents of colour that enhance the restrained elegance of the composition.
Stylistically, the sculpture bears an exceptionally close relationship to the Déblé illustrated as Figure 5.47 in Senufo Unbound: Dynamics of Art and Identity in West Africa (Cleveland Museum of Art). The two works share not merely the general characteristics of Senufo sculpture but a remarkable series of highly specific formal features: the diminutive head set upon an unusually elongated neck, almost identical body proportions, deeply curving elongated arms, prominent disc-shaped ears, the restrained modelling of the torso, the distinctive treatment of the hands, and an overall sense of quiet monumentality. Above all, the close correspondence in proportions, sculptural rhythm, and compositional balance extends well beyond what might be expected within a broader regional style.
These striking similarities strongly suggest that both sculptures originated within the same workshop tradition centred in the village of Nafoun. It is even conceivable that they were carved by the same sculptor or within the immediate circle of a single master. While such an attribution necessarily remains a stylistic hypothesis in the absence of documentary workshop evidence, it follows the well-established methodology of connoisseurship and workshop attribution that has long been employed in the study of African sculpture.
In this context, it seems appropriate to identify the stylistic group represented by the present sculpture and the example published in Senufo Unbound under the provisional designation "Master of Nafoun", or alternatively, the "Workshop of Figure 5.47." The present Déblé should be regarded as one of the finest works presently attributable to this anonymous master or his workshop. Its origin in the village of Nafoun has been independently confirmed by Belo Garba of Korhogo and Bakari Bouaflé of Abidjan. This rare convergence of local oral tradition and stylistic analysis considerably strengthens the proposed attribution and establishes the sculpture as an important reference work for the future study of regional carving ateliers among the Senufo.
Comparative Literature
McNaughton, Patrick R. (ed.), Senufo Unbound: Dynamics of Art and Identity in West Africa, Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, 2024, fig. 5.47.
Musée Fabre; Cleveland Museum; Wolfgang Jaenicke
Source: Susan Elisabeth Gagliardi, Cleveland Museum, Ohio, USA (last photo sequence). Senufo Unbound, plate 46/47 (mostly wellknown is the "Western Provenance", in the description we read "unknown artist". Perhaps one could say that this is a postcolonial, Western view of Africa, because the makers of these sculptures do not see themselves as "artists" in Africa. They are craftsmen, often blacksmiths, who, despite being integrated into village communities, usually live on the outskirts of the villages. Learning where these villages are and how the carvers influenced each other might say more about Africa than a "family tree" of Western owners. But that would mean that anthropologists do field research in Africa instead of running museums that are under the influence of the art trade.
Lit.: A lecture of Dr. Junker, "der Originalzustand.. Wo ist er geblieben?" Gottschalk Burkhard, "Senufo, Massa und die Statuen des poro" 2002: 43; Glaze Anita J., "Art and Death in a Senufo Village", Indiana University Press, Bloomington 1981. A related eyemplare: Robert Goldwater, Senufo Sculpture from West Africa, New York, 1964, ills. 88 and 88a, Werner Gillon, Collecting African Art, London, 1979, p. 50, fig. 38 William Rubin, "Primitivism" in 20th Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern, New York, 1984, vol. 1, p. 131 William Rubin, Le Primitivisme dans l’art du 20e siècle. Les artistes modernes devant l’art tribal, Paris, 1987, p. 131 Jacques Kerchache, Jean-Louis Paudrat and Lucien Stéphan, L'art africain, Paris, 1988, p. 82, pl. 34, Jacques Kerchache, Jean-Louis Paudrat, and Lucien Stéphan (eds.), Die Kunst des Schwarzen Afrika, Freiburg, 1989, p. 80, pl. 34 Jacques Kerchache, Jean-Louis Paudrat and Lucien Stéphan, Art of Africa, New York, 1993, p. 82, pl. 34 Mary H. Nooter, Secrecy: African Art that Conceals and Reveals, New York, 1993, p. 155, cat. 79.
Informant: Belo Garba et Bakari Bouaflé
Inv. No. MAZ18531
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
Senufo
Country of Origin
Côte d'Ivoire
Material
Wood
Sold with stand
No
Condition
Fair condition
Title of artwork
A wooden sculpture
Height
119 cm
Weight
13 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
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