A wooden sculpture - Losso - Togo (No reserve price)
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Holds a postgraduate degree in African studies and 15 years experience in African art.
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A wooden sculpture from Togo, attributed to the Losso (Nawdba) with a cylindrical body, 25 cm high and 680 g, with undetermined dating, in fair condition and original/official authenticity.
AI-assisted summary
Description from the seller
Losso Ritual Sculpture – Cylindrical Anthropomorphic Figure
Losso (Nawdba), Siou Village, Niamtougou Region, Northern Togo
Material: Carved wood with dark brown patina
Dating: Undetermined
Cultural Attribution: Losso (Nawdba), attributed
Function: Possibly an ancestral, protective, or spiritually empowered figure
Description
This unusual wooden sculpture is distinguished by its massive cylindrical body, architectural construction, and highly abstracted anthropomorphic features. The elongated upper section is crowned by a broad, rounded horizontal projection, decorated with deeply incised diagonal lines and angular markings. Its proportions suggest a stylized head or headdress, although the precise anatomical interpretation remains uncertain. The cylindrical body displays shallow geometric incisions, including diagonal bands, intersecting lines, and irregularly distributed markings. A prominent horizontal ridge separates the upper section from the lower structure, where short, robust supports create a partially open architectural composition. The deep recess between these supports may represent an intentional opening, although considerable surface deterioration makes its original configuration difficult to reconstruct. The lower extremity terminates in an irregularly rounded base. The wood exhibits a dark brown patina, lighter areas of abrasion, longitudinal cracks, and substantial localized erosion. These characteristics contribute to the sculpture's powerful material presence but cannot independently establish its age or ritual history. Its unusual combination of cylindrical mass, incised ornament, and openwork construction creates a distinctive sculptural composition.
Art-Historical Context
The sculpture is attributed to the Losso, particularly the Nawdba communities inhabiting the Niamtougou and Siou areas of northern Togo. The designation Losso historically encompasses several culturally related populations, including the Nawdba and, in certain administrative classifications, neighboring Lamba communities. These groups possess distinct linguistic and social identities despite sharing aspects of their regional history and material culture. Their sculptural traditions belong to a broader northern Togolese artistic environment characterized by simplified anthropomorphic forms, compact proportions, and the frequent integration of symbolic and functional elements. The present sculpture's highly reduced anatomy and emphasis on elementary volumes correspond broadly to this regional aesthetic. However, its cylindrical construction and unusual lower opening distinguish it from more conventional standing figures. Comparative studies of Lamba and Losso sculpture demonstrate considerable stylistic diversity, making precise ethnic attribution difficult without reliable collection documentation. The object may reflect a localized sculptural tradition in which anatomical representation was subordinated to symbolic form and structural organization.
Symbolism and Possible Ritual Function
Among communities of northern Togo, wooden sculptures may participate in religious practices concerning ancestors, protective forces, and relationships between living families and the spiritual world. Certain regional figures have been interpreted as material representations or receptacles of ancestral and other spiritual presences, while others have been associated with protection, healing, or the commemoration of twins. The designation alua appears in discussions of related Lamba and Losso sculptures, although its application to the present object cannot be confirmed. The cylindrical body and prominent upper projection may have conveyed a deliberately simplified anthropomorphic identity, while the incised markings could represent scarification, ornamental decoration, or other culturally meaningful signs. Nevertheless, their specific symbolism remains undocumented. The pronounced opening beneath the main body raises the possibility of a functional or ritual purpose, perhaps involving placement over another object or integration into a larger installation. Such interpretations remain hypothetical. Without information concerning its original setting, the sculpture cannot confidently be classified as an ancestor figure, shrine object, or protective implement. Its possible ritual significance should therefore be considered within the wider context of northern Togolese religious traditions rather than assigned to a specific ceremony.
Regional Characteristics: Siou and Niamtougou
Siou lies within the historically important Nawdba-speaking area surrounding Niamtougou in northern Togo. This region forms part of the mountainous and agricultural landscape of the Kara area, where settlement patterns, lineage organization, and religious practices have developed through longstanding relationships among neighboring communities. Ethnographic research emphasizes both the similarities and distinctions between Nawdba, Lamba, and Kabyè populations, particularly regarding language, social organization, and local traditions. The designation Losso should therefore be understood as a broader historical classification rather than an entirely uniform cultural identity. The sculptural traditions of this region are notable for their formal diversity and relative independence from the more extensively documented artistic conventions of southern Togo. Wooden figures associated with ancestral remembrance, protection, and other religious concerns frequently demonstrate a preference for simplified anatomical structures and expressive geometric forms. The present object's monumental cylindrical proportions, restrained surface ornament, and unusual structural configuration may reflect a localized artistic approach, although a specific Siou workshop attribution cannot be established. The information supplied by the informant Ouro provides a valuable geographical reference, particularly because reliable documentation of individual sculptural traditions in this region remains comparatively limited.
Art-Historical Appreciation
The sculpture's artistic distinction lies in its powerful reduction of the human form to an arrangement of elementary geometric volumes. The broad upper projection establishes a strong horizontal accent, contrasting with the elongated cylindrical body and the open architectural structure below. The incised decoration introduces rhythmic movement across otherwise restrained surfaces, while the irregular patina and areas of erosion emphasize the material character of the wood. Particularly striking is the relationship between solid mass and negative space: the substantial upper body appears supported by a comparatively open lower construction, producing a visually compelling tension between weight and structural openness. This unusual configuration distinguishes the sculpture from more familiar anthropomorphic figures of northern Togo. Its significance resides in the combination of sculptural abstraction, regional artistic vocabulary, and possible ritual associations. Although its original function remains uncertain, the object offers an intriguing example of the formal experimentation encountered within the comparatively understudied wooden sculpture traditions of the Losso and neighboring Lamba communities.
Selected Literature
Amrouche, Pierre. Corps & décors: Statuaire Lamba et Losso du Togo. Paris: Éditions Berggruen, 2008.
Keller, Thomas. Northern Togo Statuary. Lully, 2018.
Hahn, Hans Peter. Die materielle Kultur der Konkomba, Kabyè und Lamba in Nord-Togo. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag, 1996.
Froelich, Jean-Claude, Pierre Alexandre, and Robert Cornevin. Les populations du Nord-Togo. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1963.
Informant: Ouro
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. MAZ32294
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
Losso Ritual Sculpture – Cylindrical Anthropomorphic Figure
Losso (Nawdba), Siou Village, Niamtougou Region, Northern Togo
Material: Carved wood with dark brown patina
Dating: Undetermined
Cultural Attribution: Losso (Nawdba), attributed
Function: Possibly an ancestral, protective, or spiritually empowered figure
Description
This unusual wooden sculpture is distinguished by its massive cylindrical body, architectural construction, and highly abstracted anthropomorphic features. The elongated upper section is crowned by a broad, rounded horizontal projection, decorated with deeply incised diagonal lines and angular markings. Its proportions suggest a stylized head or headdress, although the precise anatomical interpretation remains uncertain. The cylindrical body displays shallow geometric incisions, including diagonal bands, intersecting lines, and irregularly distributed markings. A prominent horizontal ridge separates the upper section from the lower structure, where short, robust supports create a partially open architectural composition. The deep recess between these supports may represent an intentional opening, although considerable surface deterioration makes its original configuration difficult to reconstruct. The lower extremity terminates in an irregularly rounded base. The wood exhibits a dark brown patina, lighter areas of abrasion, longitudinal cracks, and substantial localized erosion. These characteristics contribute to the sculpture's powerful material presence but cannot independently establish its age or ritual history. Its unusual combination of cylindrical mass, incised ornament, and openwork construction creates a distinctive sculptural composition.
Art-Historical Context
The sculpture is attributed to the Losso, particularly the Nawdba communities inhabiting the Niamtougou and Siou areas of northern Togo. The designation Losso historically encompasses several culturally related populations, including the Nawdba and, in certain administrative classifications, neighboring Lamba communities. These groups possess distinct linguistic and social identities despite sharing aspects of their regional history and material culture. Their sculptural traditions belong to a broader northern Togolese artistic environment characterized by simplified anthropomorphic forms, compact proportions, and the frequent integration of symbolic and functional elements. The present sculpture's highly reduced anatomy and emphasis on elementary volumes correspond broadly to this regional aesthetic. However, its cylindrical construction and unusual lower opening distinguish it from more conventional standing figures. Comparative studies of Lamba and Losso sculpture demonstrate considerable stylistic diversity, making precise ethnic attribution difficult without reliable collection documentation. The object may reflect a localized sculptural tradition in which anatomical representation was subordinated to symbolic form and structural organization.
Symbolism and Possible Ritual Function
Among communities of northern Togo, wooden sculptures may participate in religious practices concerning ancestors, protective forces, and relationships between living families and the spiritual world. Certain regional figures have been interpreted as material representations or receptacles of ancestral and other spiritual presences, while others have been associated with protection, healing, or the commemoration of twins. The designation alua appears in discussions of related Lamba and Losso sculptures, although its application to the present object cannot be confirmed. The cylindrical body and prominent upper projection may have conveyed a deliberately simplified anthropomorphic identity, while the incised markings could represent scarification, ornamental decoration, or other culturally meaningful signs. Nevertheless, their specific symbolism remains undocumented. The pronounced opening beneath the main body raises the possibility of a functional or ritual purpose, perhaps involving placement over another object or integration into a larger installation. Such interpretations remain hypothetical. Without information concerning its original setting, the sculpture cannot confidently be classified as an ancestor figure, shrine object, or protective implement. Its possible ritual significance should therefore be considered within the wider context of northern Togolese religious traditions rather than assigned to a specific ceremony.
Regional Characteristics: Siou and Niamtougou
Siou lies within the historically important Nawdba-speaking area surrounding Niamtougou in northern Togo. This region forms part of the mountainous and agricultural landscape of the Kara area, where settlement patterns, lineage organization, and religious practices have developed through longstanding relationships among neighboring communities. Ethnographic research emphasizes both the similarities and distinctions between Nawdba, Lamba, and Kabyè populations, particularly regarding language, social organization, and local traditions. The designation Losso should therefore be understood as a broader historical classification rather than an entirely uniform cultural identity. The sculptural traditions of this region are notable for their formal diversity and relative independence from the more extensively documented artistic conventions of southern Togo. Wooden figures associated with ancestral remembrance, protection, and other religious concerns frequently demonstrate a preference for simplified anatomical structures and expressive geometric forms. The present object's monumental cylindrical proportions, restrained surface ornament, and unusual structural configuration may reflect a localized artistic approach, although a specific Siou workshop attribution cannot be established. The information supplied by the informant Ouro provides a valuable geographical reference, particularly because reliable documentation of individual sculptural traditions in this region remains comparatively limited.
Art-Historical Appreciation
The sculpture's artistic distinction lies in its powerful reduction of the human form to an arrangement of elementary geometric volumes. The broad upper projection establishes a strong horizontal accent, contrasting with the elongated cylindrical body and the open architectural structure below. The incised decoration introduces rhythmic movement across otherwise restrained surfaces, while the irregular patina and areas of erosion emphasize the material character of the wood. Particularly striking is the relationship between solid mass and negative space: the substantial upper body appears supported by a comparatively open lower construction, producing a visually compelling tension between weight and structural openness. This unusual configuration distinguishes the sculpture from more familiar anthropomorphic figures of northern Togo. Its significance resides in the combination of sculptural abstraction, regional artistic vocabulary, and possible ritual associations. Although its original function remains uncertain, the object offers an intriguing example of the formal experimentation encountered within the comparatively understudied wooden sculpture traditions of the Losso and neighboring Lamba communities.
Selected Literature
Amrouche, Pierre. Corps & décors: Statuaire Lamba et Losso du Togo. Paris: Éditions Berggruen, 2008.
Keller, Thomas. Northern Togo Statuary. Lully, 2018.
Hahn, Hans Peter. Die materielle Kultur der Konkomba, Kabyè und Lamba in Nord-Togo. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag, 1996.
Froelich, Jean-Claude, Pierre Alexandre, and Robert Cornevin. Les populations du Nord-Togo. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1963.
Informant: Ouro
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. MAZ32294
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
No
Condition
Fair condition
Title of artwork
A wooden sculpture
Height
25 cm
Weight
680 g
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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