A wooden sculpture - Prampram - Ghana (No reserve price)
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Selected by Dimitri André
Holds a postgraduate degree in African studies and 15 years experience in African art.
Estimate € 450 - € 550
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A large anthropomorphic wooden sculpture from the Prampram area of the Southern Region, Ghana, carved in dark brown to gray-brown wood, about 107 cm tall and weighing 4.9 kg, sold with a stand and currently supported by a modern metal bracket on a black base, described as original/official and in fair condition.
AI-assisted summary
Description from the seller
Prampram Anthropomorphic Figure Sculpture
Origin: Southern Region, Ghana
Material: Dark brown to gray-brown wood, with small abrasions and several longitudinal cracks.
Visual description
This large anthropomorphic wooden figure features an extremely simplified and strongly vertical design. The body, likely carved from a single block of wood, takes the form of a long cylindrical shape that widens slightly at the shoulders and then gradually tapers toward the lower part. Two narrow, elongated arms extend parallel to each side of the torso, with no detailed representation of the hands. The lower body divides into two long, tapered legs forming a triangular opening. The sculpture is currently supported by a modern metal bracket attached to a black rectangular base, a feature that should not be confused with its original presentation. The neck, exceptionally long and cylindrical, supports an ovoid, almost spherical head, which is disproportionate to the narrowness of the body. The facial features are reduced to a few simple marks: two circular indentations indicate the eyes; a long, very slightly protruding vertical ridge forms the nose and connects to a small horizontal opening representing the mouth. Lateral indentations appear where the ears would be. The chest features two relatively symmetrical perforations, which may conventionally correspond to the nipples; another perforation appears lower on the body and could indicate the navel. Published comparisons with other so-called Prampram figures clearly show this same pattern of indentations for the eyes, ears, nipples, and navel. The surface is dark brown to grayish-brown, with reddish tones in places. It shows irregular wear, small abrasions, surface deposits, and several longitudinal cracks, particularly on the head and torso. These marks indicate a long material history, but they do not, on their own, prove ritual use. Some perforations may also have once held attached materials or result from successive interventions; a direct analysis of the wood and the cavities would be necessary to determine this.
Historical and Artistic Analysis
The term "Prampram" should be used with caution. Prampram is first and foremost a locality and a Dangme community on the southeastern coast of Ghana, east of Accra. The body of work currently referred to as "Prampram sculptures" remains understudied in academic literature and does not yet constitute a stylistic school defined with the precision afforded, for example, to certain Akan, Ewe, or Moba traditions. A recent overview of this body of work emphasizes precisely its still provisional nature and the discrepancies in the geographical attribution of several pieces.
Formally, however, this figure corresponds remarkably well to the works grouped under this designation: an extremely elongated, columnar body; slender limbs; a long, cylindrical neck; an ovoid head; a radical simplification of facial features; and the use of perforations as anatomical markers. These principles distance the sculpture from naturalism in favor of an almost architectural frontal presence. In traditional Ghanaian art more broadly, the human figure frequently plays a central role in the materialization of social, spiritual, or commemorative concepts; this anthropomorphic primacy is also noted by Dogbe and by subsequent research on Ghanaian sculpture. However, one should avoid automatically identifying this large sculpture with the aklama. The aklama, which are well documented among the Ewe and the Dangme, are generally small figures or forms representing beings, animals, or objects and functioning as auxiliary spirits; the 2016 reference monograph notably highlights their small scale and extraordinary diversity. The monumental scale and highly elongated form of this figure therefore suggest a different category, even though it belongs to the same broad Dangme religious context.
Ritual Function
The Dangme religious context nonetheless includes shrines, altars, deities, and forms of commemoration associated with kinship groups. Nii Otokunor Quarcoopome has shown that public Dangme altars can serve as spiritual anchors for lineage groups, be linked to clan founders, and become major centers of ritual activity. Regarding the figures now known as Prampram, field notes report that some examples were reportedly kept in homes or sanctuary spaces. However, this information derives primarily from oral traditions and collection archives, rather than from published and verified ethnographic documentation. Another oral tradition recorded for certain Ningo-Prampram figures interprets them as representations of characters or heroes associated with local history. While this information is interesting, it should not be automatically applied to this particular specimen. The most reasonable hypothesis, therefore, is to consider the object as a figure of presence, potentially linked to a sanctuary, to the memory of a figure, an ancestor, a founder, or a spiritual power. Its frontal, immobile pose, its large scale, and the simplification of the body reinforce the idea of a lasting presence rather than that of an individual portrait. The perforations may have played a role in the figure's material activation, but no specific function—such as the insertion of elements, offerings, or the attachment of accessories—should be proposed without technical analysis.
Selected Bibliography
Cole, Herbert M. & Doran H. Ross, *The Arts of Ghana*, Museum of Cultural History, University of California, Los Angeles, 1977. A major general work on the arts and religious contexts of Ghana.
Kilson, Marion, *Kpele Lala: Ga Religious Songs and Symbols*, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1971. A seminal study of Ga religion and symbolism in southern Ghana.
Quarcoopome, Nii Otokunor, "Thresholds and Thrones: Morphology and Symbolism of Dangme Public Altars," Journal of Religion in Africa, vol. 24, no. 4, 1994, pp. 339–357.
Pezolli, Gigi; Plath, Philipp; Quarcoopome, Nii Otokunor et al., *Aklama: Helper Spirits of the Ewe and Dangme from the Study Collection of Horst Antes*, Studienstiftung Horst Antes, Karlsruhe, 2016, 503 pp.
Dogbe, B. K., "The Human Form as a Central Theme in Art," *Image*, Journal of the College of Art, Kumasi, 1977, esp. p. 89; reference cited in contemporary studies of traditional Ghanaian sculpture.
The publications mentioned serve for comparative art historical classification. They do not establish the specific cultural attribution, dating, or original use of the sculpture in question.
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. MAZ33354
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
Prampram Anthropomorphic Figure Sculpture
Origin: Southern Region, Ghana
Material: Dark brown to gray-brown wood, with small abrasions and several longitudinal cracks.
Visual description
This large anthropomorphic wooden figure features an extremely simplified and strongly vertical design. The body, likely carved from a single block of wood, takes the form of a long cylindrical shape that widens slightly at the shoulders and then gradually tapers toward the lower part. Two narrow, elongated arms extend parallel to each side of the torso, with no detailed representation of the hands. The lower body divides into two long, tapered legs forming a triangular opening. The sculpture is currently supported by a modern metal bracket attached to a black rectangular base, a feature that should not be confused with its original presentation. The neck, exceptionally long and cylindrical, supports an ovoid, almost spherical head, which is disproportionate to the narrowness of the body. The facial features are reduced to a few simple marks: two circular indentations indicate the eyes; a long, very slightly protruding vertical ridge forms the nose and connects to a small horizontal opening representing the mouth. Lateral indentations appear where the ears would be. The chest features two relatively symmetrical perforations, which may conventionally correspond to the nipples; another perforation appears lower on the body and could indicate the navel. Published comparisons with other so-called Prampram figures clearly show this same pattern of indentations for the eyes, ears, nipples, and navel. The surface is dark brown to grayish-brown, with reddish tones in places. It shows irregular wear, small abrasions, surface deposits, and several longitudinal cracks, particularly on the head and torso. These marks indicate a long material history, but they do not, on their own, prove ritual use. Some perforations may also have once held attached materials or result from successive interventions; a direct analysis of the wood and the cavities would be necessary to determine this.
Historical and Artistic Analysis
The term "Prampram" should be used with caution. Prampram is first and foremost a locality and a Dangme community on the southeastern coast of Ghana, east of Accra. The body of work currently referred to as "Prampram sculptures" remains understudied in academic literature and does not yet constitute a stylistic school defined with the precision afforded, for example, to certain Akan, Ewe, or Moba traditions. A recent overview of this body of work emphasizes precisely its still provisional nature and the discrepancies in the geographical attribution of several pieces.
Formally, however, this figure corresponds remarkably well to the works grouped under this designation: an extremely elongated, columnar body; slender limbs; a long, cylindrical neck; an ovoid head; a radical simplification of facial features; and the use of perforations as anatomical markers. These principles distance the sculpture from naturalism in favor of an almost architectural frontal presence. In traditional Ghanaian art more broadly, the human figure frequently plays a central role in the materialization of social, spiritual, or commemorative concepts; this anthropomorphic primacy is also noted by Dogbe and by subsequent research on Ghanaian sculpture. However, one should avoid automatically identifying this large sculpture with the aklama. The aklama, which are well documented among the Ewe and the Dangme, are generally small figures or forms representing beings, animals, or objects and functioning as auxiliary spirits; the 2016 reference monograph notably highlights their small scale and extraordinary diversity. The monumental scale and highly elongated form of this figure therefore suggest a different category, even though it belongs to the same broad Dangme religious context.
Ritual Function
The Dangme religious context nonetheless includes shrines, altars, deities, and forms of commemoration associated with kinship groups. Nii Otokunor Quarcoopome has shown that public Dangme altars can serve as spiritual anchors for lineage groups, be linked to clan founders, and become major centers of ritual activity. Regarding the figures now known as Prampram, field notes report that some examples were reportedly kept in homes or sanctuary spaces. However, this information derives primarily from oral traditions and collection archives, rather than from published and verified ethnographic documentation. Another oral tradition recorded for certain Ningo-Prampram figures interprets them as representations of characters or heroes associated with local history. While this information is interesting, it should not be automatically applied to this particular specimen. The most reasonable hypothesis, therefore, is to consider the object as a figure of presence, potentially linked to a sanctuary, to the memory of a figure, an ancestor, a founder, or a spiritual power. Its frontal, immobile pose, its large scale, and the simplification of the body reinforce the idea of a lasting presence rather than that of an individual portrait. The perforations may have played a role in the figure's material activation, but no specific function—such as the insertion of elements, offerings, or the attachment of accessories—should be proposed without technical analysis.
Selected Bibliography
Cole, Herbert M. & Doran H. Ross, *The Arts of Ghana*, Museum of Cultural History, University of California, Los Angeles, 1977. A major general work on the arts and religious contexts of Ghana.
Kilson, Marion, *Kpele Lala: Ga Religious Songs and Symbols*, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1971. A seminal study of Ga religion and symbolism in southern Ghana.
Quarcoopome, Nii Otokunor, "Thresholds and Thrones: Morphology and Symbolism of Dangme Public Altars," Journal of Religion in Africa, vol. 24, no. 4, 1994, pp. 339–357.
Pezolli, Gigi; Plath, Philipp; Quarcoopome, Nii Otokunor et al., *Aklama: Helper Spirits of the Ewe and Dangme from the Study Collection of Horst Antes*, Studienstiftung Horst Antes, Karlsruhe, 2016, 503 pp.
Dogbe, B. K., "The Human Form as a Central Theme in Art," *Image*, Journal of the College of Art, Kumasi, 1977, esp. p. 89; reference cited in contemporary studies of traditional Ghanaian sculpture.
The publications mentioned serve for comparative art historical classification. They do not establish the specific cultural attribution, dating, or original use of the sculpture in question.
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. MAZ33354
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
Prampram
Country of Origin
Ghana
Material
Wood
Sold with stand
Yes
Condition
Fair condition
Title of artwork
A wooden sculpture
Height
107 cm
Weight
4.9 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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