A wooden sculpture - Lobi - Burkina Faso (No reserve price)
02
days
03
hours
15
minutes
51
seconds
Starting bid
€ 1
No reserve price
Expert
Selected by Dimitri André
Holds a postgraduate degree in African studies and 15 years experience in African art.
Estimate € 230 - € 270
No bids placed
Catawiki Buyer Protection
Your payment’s safe with us until you receive your object.View details
Trustpilot 4.4 | 145304 reviews
Rated Excellent on Trustpilot.
This original Lobi wooden statuette, titled “A wooden sculpture”, originates from Burkina Faso and depicts a standing figure with one hand raised to its face.
AI-assisted summary
Description from the seller
Lobi Anthropomorphic Statuette — Bateba
Figure with a Hand Raised to the Face — Gaoua Region, Burkina Faso
Cultural Area: Lobi, southwestern Burkina Faso
Origin: Gaoua Region
Material: Carved wood, brown-gray patina
Date: Undetermined
Condition: Visible wear, cracks, and small losses
Description
This anthropomorphic statuette attributed to the Lobi depicts a standing figure in a distinctive pose characterized by a hand raised to the face. Carved from wood, it has a compact and slightly asymmetrical silhouette, consisting of a relatively large head, a short neck, an elongated torso, and thick legs. The ovoid-shaped face features almond-shaped eyes, accentuated by incised eyelids, a prominent nose, and a small mouth with slightly parted lips. The ears are clearly defined. The short, flattened hairstyle is outlined by engraved lines. One of the arms, strongly bent, is raised up to the face. The outstretched hand, whose fingers are indicated by parallel incisions, is positioned in front of the nose and mouth. The other arm hangs naturally down along the body. The legs, slightly apart, end in large triangular feet. The surface has an irregular brown-gray patina, signs of wear, and several small cavities. Cracks are visible on the head and certain parts of the body. A chip is visible on the tip of one foot.
Historical and Artistic Analysis
This sculpture is part of the artistic vocabulary of Lobi anthropomorphic figures, characterized by significant stylistic and gestural diversity. The anatomical simplification emphasizes the figure's presence rather than a naturalistic representation. The volumes of the face, shoulders, and legs contrast with the slenderness of the raised arm. The gesture forms the center of the composition. It disrupts the usual stability of the standing figure and introduces a narrative dimension. Research by Daniela Bognolo shows that Lobi sculpture is part of traditions of technical and stylistic transmission linked to workshops, master sculptors, and religious requirements. The attribution to Gaoua remains an indication of provenance; the photographs do not allow for the identification of a specific workshop.
Iconography
The iconography is based primarily on the hand raised to the face, a gesture whose significance extends beyond mere anatomical representation. In certain categories of Lobi sculpture, bodily postures express specific human situations: grief, suffering, protection, or confrontation with invisible powers. This work can be compared to figures known as bateba yadawora, sometimes referred to as "sad figures," whose gestures evoke mourning or pain. However, the precise identification of this statuette with this category remains hypothetical. The position of the hand in front of the nose and mouth is not sufficient to determine its original ritual significance.
Historical and Artistic Assessment
The sculptural originality of this work lies in the combination of a robust physical structure and a delicate gesture. The elongated eyes, the contours of the skull, and the focused expression on the face reinforce its visual intensity. The raised arm creates a vertical movement that animates the silhouette. The absence of significant ornamentation highlights the sculpture itself. The patina and irregularities of the wood bear witness to a material history, though they do not allow for a definitive conclusion regarding the piece's age. This economy of means gives the figure a remarkable expressive presence.
Cultural Context
The Lobi people live primarily in southwestern Burkina Faso, particularly around Gaoua, as well as in certain neighboring regions of Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire. Their religious traditions accord great importance to the thila, invisible powers that influence the relationships between humans and their environment. Carved figures, particularly those grouped under the terms bateba or bùthiba, can play a role in these spiritual relationships. Their creation is sometimes prescribed by a diviner in response to a specific situation affecting an individual or a family group.
Ritual Use
In the Lobi tradition, certain sculptures are placed on domestic altars, where they may receive offerings and sacrifices. They play a role in practices aimed at maintaining favorable relations with spiritual powers and protecting people from illness, misfortune, or influences considered dangerous. According to certain ethnographic interpretations, figures associated with affliction may symbolically take on human suffering.
For this particular sculpture, this function remains plausible but unproven. No information regarding its altar, its original owner, or the ceremonies in which it was used is available.
Historical Significance in Art
Lobi statuary occupies an important place in the history of West African art, particularly due to the richness of its gestural language. It reflects a conception in which the sculpted object is not merely a representation but can actively participate in religious and social life. This work illustrates the ability of Lobi sculptors to convey a complex human experience through a simple bodily posture.
Its historical significance thus lies in the interplay between artistic creation, local traditions, and spiritual practices.
Bibliography — References
Meyer, Piet. Kunst und Religion der Lobi. Zurich: Museum Rietberg, 1981.
Bognolo, Daniela. Lobi. Milan: 5 Continents Éditions, "Visions d'Afrique" series, 2007.
Bognolo, Daniela. "Djetó! Watch out! The 'path of sculpture' among the Lobi of Burkina Faso." Journal des africanistes, vol. 67, no. 1, 1997, pp. 123–133.
Somé, Roger. African Art and Western Aesthetics: Lobi and Dagara Sculpture in Burkina Faso. Paris: L'Harmattan, 1998.
Blier, Suzanne Preston. Gestures in African Art. New York: L. Kahan Gallery, 1982.
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 rights holders are reserved.
Inv. No. MAZ34762
Seller's Story
Wolfgang Jaenicke’s engagement with African art did not begin in the field or the marketplace but in a quieter, more inward space—among papers, books, and objects that belonged to his father. The archive on Germany’s former colonies was not arranged to tell a single story; it suggested many. It invited scrutiny rather than reverence, and it taught Jaenicke early on that objects are never mute. They carry time inside them—fracture and continuity held in the same form—and they ask to be read as carefully as texts.
For more than a quarter century, Jaenicke has worked as a collector, dealer, and intermediary, though none of these terms quite captures the shape of his practice. What used to be grouped, too casually, under the heading of “Tribal Art” has never appeared to him as a sealed or historical category. It is, instead, a set of living traditions, constantly negotiating the present. His academic training—in ethnology, art history, and comparative law—provided a grammar. The language itself he learned elsewhere. In Mali, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Togo, and Ghana, knowledge emerged slowly, through repeated encounters that hardened into relationships, and through trust built not all at once but over years.
Mali became the gravitational center of this experience. Between 2002 and 2012, Jaenicke lived and worked in Bamako and Ségou, where he ran Tribalartforum, a gallery overlooking the Niger River. The space resisted easy chronology. Sculptures and ceramics shared the room with photography, and works by Malick Sidibé—images of Malian youth in the 1970s, self-assured and exuberant—hung alongside older ritual forms. The effect was not nostalgic but clarifying: past and present did not cancel each other out; they sharpened one another.
The war of 2012 ended this chapter abruptly, as wars tend to do. But it did not dissolve the work. Together with Aguibou Kamaté, Jaenicke regrouped in Lomé, closer to the places where many of the objects originated and to the routes they continue to travel. Since 2018, Berlin has become another point on this map. Galerie Wolfgang Jaenicke now operates opposite Charlottenburg Palace, supported by a small team of specialists. Its focus rests, in particular, on West African bronzes and terracottas—materials shaped by earth and fire, and by forms of memory that resist easy translation.
What distinguishes Jaenicke’s practice is not only its geographical range but its internal tension. Fieldwork is paired with provenance research; commerce is treated as inseparable from responsibility. In collaboration with museums and scholarly initiatives, circulation is framed not as extraction but as an ethical process that remains unfinished. The aim is not to remove objects from the world and seal them off, but to keep them readable within it—to allow them to continue speaking, even as the conditions of their speech change.
------------
Galerie Wolfgang Jaenicke is a Berlin-based gallery specializing in West African sculpture, bronzes, terracottas, masks, and contemporary African art. It is directed by Wolfgang Jaenicke, whose work combines collecting, dealing, provenance research, fieldwork, and archival documentation.
According to the gallery’s own account, Jaenicke studied ethnology, art history, and comparative law and has worked in the field of African art for more than twenty-five years. His activities developed through long-term engagement in countries including Mali, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Ghana, and Togo. Rather than presenting African art as a closed historical category, he describes it as a continuing cultural tradition shaped by living communities and changing historical contexts.
A particularly important phase of his career was in Mali, where he lived and worked between roughly 2002 and 2012 in Bamako and Ségou. There he operated Tribalartforum, a gallery that combined historical African sculpture with contemporary African photography, including works by Malick Sidibé. The political and military crisis in Mali in 2012 led to the closure of this phase of activity.
Later, together with Aguibou Kamaté, Jaenicke continued working from Lomé, Togo, before establishing a gallery presence in Berlin near Charlottenburg Palace. The gallery places particular emphasis on West African bronzes, terracottas, Benin and Ife-related works, Nok sculpture, Dogon art, Baule sculpture, Senufo objects, and Yoruba material.
One distinctive aspect of Jaenicke’s public position is his repeated emphasis on provenance transparency and restitution debates. On several published object records, the gallery explicitly discusses issues surrounding export documentation, UNESCO conventions, ownership histories, and communication with scholars and restitution researchers. These statements reflect broader contemporary debates about the circulation of African cultural heritage, legality, collecting history, and museum acquisition practices.
The gallery maintains extensive online archives and catalogues documenting hundreds of African objects, including Benin and Ife bronzes, Nok terracottas, Dogon sculptures, Baule figures, Fon objects, Moba figures, and other West African material.
For researchers interested in the history of the African art trade, Jaenicke represents a later generation of dealers compared with figures such as John J. Klejman. Whereas Klejman belonged to the postwar New York market of the 1950s–1970s, Jaenicke’s work has been shaped by contemporary concerns with field documentation, provenance research, restitution discussions, digital archives, and direct engagement with West African networks and artists.
This text is based on AI Information
Lobi Anthropomorphic Statuette — Bateba
Figure with a Hand Raised to the Face — Gaoua Region, Burkina Faso
Cultural Area: Lobi, southwestern Burkina Faso
Origin: Gaoua Region
Material: Carved wood, brown-gray patina
Date: Undetermined
Condition: Visible wear, cracks, and small losses
Description
This anthropomorphic statuette attributed to the Lobi depicts a standing figure in a distinctive pose characterized by a hand raised to the face. Carved from wood, it has a compact and slightly asymmetrical silhouette, consisting of a relatively large head, a short neck, an elongated torso, and thick legs. The ovoid-shaped face features almond-shaped eyes, accentuated by incised eyelids, a prominent nose, and a small mouth with slightly parted lips. The ears are clearly defined. The short, flattened hairstyle is outlined by engraved lines. One of the arms, strongly bent, is raised up to the face. The outstretched hand, whose fingers are indicated by parallel incisions, is positioned in front of the nose and mouth. The other arm hangs naturally down along the body. The legs, slightly apart, end in large triangular feet. The surface has an irregular brown-gray patina, signs of wear, and several small cavities. Cracks are visible on the head and certain parts of the body. A chip is visible on the tip of one foot.
Historical and Artistic Analysis
This sculpture is part of the artistic vocabulary of Lobi anthropomorphic figures, characterized by significant stylistic and gestural diversity. The anatomical simplification emphasizes the figure's presence rather than a naturalistic representation. The volumes of the face, shoulders, and legs contrast with the slenderness of the raised arm. The gesture forms the center of the composition. It disrupts the usual stability of the standing figure and introduces a narrative dimension. Research by Daniela Bognolo shows that Lobi sculpture is part of traditions of technical and stylistic transmission linked to workshops, master sculptors, and religious requirements. The attribution to Gaoua remains an indication of provenance; the photographs do not allow for the identification of a specific workshop.
Iconography
The iconography is based primarily on the hand raised to the face, a gesture whose significance extends beyond mere anatomical representation. In certain categories of Lobi sculpture, bodily postures express specific human situations: grief, suffering, protection, or confrontation with invisible powers. This work can be compared to figures known as bateba yadawora, sometimes referred to as "sad figures," whose gestures evoke mourning or pain. However, the precise identification of this statuette with this category remains hypothetical. The position of the hand in front of the nose and mouth is not sufficient to determine its original ritual significance.
Historical and Artistic Assessment
The sculptural originality of this work lies in the combination of a robust physical structure and a delicate gesture. The elongated eyes, the contours of the skull, and the focused expression on the face reinforce its visual intensity. The raised arm creates a vertical movement that animates the silhouette. The absence of significant ornamentation highlights the sculpture itself. The patina and irregularities of the wood bear witness to a material history, though they do not allow for a definitive conclusion regarding the piece's age. This economy of means gives the figure a remarkable expressive presence.
Cultural Context
The Lobi people live primarily in southwestern Burkina Faso, particularly around Gaoua, as well as in certain neighboring regions of Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire. Their religious traditions accord great importance to the thila, invisible powers that influence the relationships between humans and their environment. Carved figures, particularly those grouped under the terms bateba or bùthiba, can play a role in these spiritual relationships. Their creation is sometimes prescribed by a diviner in response to a specific situation affecting an individual or a family group.
Ritual Use
In the Lobi tradition, certain sculptures are placed on domestic altars, where they may receive offerings and sacrifices. They play a role in practices aimed at maintaining favorable relations with spiritual powers and protecting people from illness, misfortune, or influences considered dangerous. According to certain ethnographic interpretations, figures associated with affliction may symbolically take on human suffering.
For this particular sculpture, this function remains plausible but unproven. No information regarding its altar, its original owner, or the ceremonies in which it was used is available.
Historical Significance in Art
Lobi statuary occupies an important place in the history of West African art, particularly due to the richness of its gestural language. It reflects a conception in which the sculpted object is not merely a representation but can actively participate in religious and social life. This work illustrates the ability of Lobi sculptors to convey a complex human experience through a simple bodily posture.
Its historical significance thus lies in the interplay between artistic creation, local traditions, and spiritual practices.
Bibliography — References
Meyer, Piet. Kunst und Religion der Lobi. Zurich: Museum Rietberg, 1981.
Bognolo, Daniela. Lobi. Milan: 5 Continents Éditions, "Visions d'Afrique" series, 2007.
Bognolo, Daniela. "Djetó! Watch out! The 'path of sculpture' among the Lobi of Burkina Faso." Journal des africanistes, vol. 67, no. 1, 1997, pp. 123–133.
Somé, Roger. African Art and Western Aesthetics: Lobi and Dagara Sculpture in Burkina Faso. Paris: L'Harmattan, 1998.
Blier, Suzanne Preston. Gestures in African Art. New York: L. Kahan Gallery, 1982.
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 rights holders are reserved.
Inv. No. MAZ34762
Seller's Story
Wolfgang Jaenicke’s engagement with African art did not begin in the field or the marketplace but in a quieter, more inward space—among papers, books, and objects that belonged to his father. The archive on Germany’s former colonies was not arranged to tell a single story; it suggested many. It invited scrutiny rather than reverence, and it taught Jaenicke early on that objects are never mute. They carry time inside them—fracture and continuity held in the same form—and they ask to be read as carefully as texts.
For more than a quarter century, Jaenicke has worked as a collector, dealer, and intermediary, though none of these terms quite captures the shape of his practice. What used to be grouped, too casually, under the heading of “Tribal Art” has never appeared to him as a sealed or historical category. It is, instead, a set of living traditions, constantly negotiating the present. His academic training—in ethnology, art history, and comparative law—provided a grammar. The language itself he learned elsewhere. In Mali, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Togo, and Ghana, knowledge emerged slowly, through repeated encounters that hardened into relationships, and through trust built not all at once but over years.
Mali became the gravitational center of this experience. Between 2002 and 2012, Jaenicke lived and worked in Bamako and Ségou, where he ran Tribalartforum, a gallery overlooking the Niger River. The space resisted easy chronology. Sculptures and ceramics shared the room with photography, and works by Malick Sidibé—images of Malian youth in the 1970s, self-assured and exuberant—hung alongside older ritual forms. The effect was not nostalgic but clarifying: past and present did not cancel each other out; they sharpened one another.
The war of 2012 ended this chapter abruptly, as wars tend to do. But it did not dissolve the work. Together with Aguibou Kamaté, Jaenicke regrouped in Lomé, closer to the places where many of the objects originated and to the routes they continue to travel. Since 2018, Berlin has become another point on this map. Galerie Wolfgang Jaenicke now operates opposite Charlottenburg Palace, supported by a small team of specialists. Its focus rests, in particular, on West African bronzes and terracottas—materials shaped by earth and fire, and by forms of memory that resist easy translation.
What distinguishes Jaenicke’s practice is not only its geographical range but its internal tension. Fieldwork is paired with provenance research; commerce is treated as inseparable from responsibility. In collaboration with museums and scholarly initiatives, circulation is framed not as extraction but as an ethical process that remains unfinished. The aim is not to remove objects from the world and seal them off, but to keep them readable within it—to allow them to continue speaking, even as the conditions of their speech change.
------------
Galerie Wolfgang Jaenicke is a Berlin-based gallery specializing in West African sculpture, bronzes, terracottas, masks, and contemporary African art. It is directed by Wolfgang Jaenicke, whose work combines collecting, dealing, provenance research, fieldwork, and archival documentation.
According to the gallery’s own account, Jaenicke studied ethnology, art history, and comparative law and has worked in the field of African art for more than twenty-five years. His activities developed through long-term engagement in countries including Mali, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Ghana, and Togo. Rather than presenting African art as a closed historical category, he describes it as a continuing cultural tradition shaped by living communities and changing historical contexts.
A particularly important phase of his career was in Mali, where he lived and worked between roughly 2002 and 2012 in Bamako and Ségou. There he operated Tribalartforum, a gallery that combined historical African sculpture with contemporary African photography, including works by Malick Sidibé. The political and military crisis in Mali in 2012 led to the closure of this phase of activity.
Later, together with Aguibou Kamaté, Jaenicke continued working from Lomé, Togo, before establishing a gallery presence in Berlin near Charlottenburg Palace. The gallery places particular emphasis on West African bronzes, terracottas, Benin and Ife-related works, Nok sculpture, Dogon art, Baule sculpture, Senufo objects, and Yoruba material.
One distinctive aspect of Jaenicke’s public position is his repeated emphasis on provenance transparency and restitution debates. On several published object records, the gallery explicitly discusses issues surrounding export documentation, UNESCO conventions, ownership histories, and communication with scholars and restitution researchers. These statements reflect broader contemporary debates about the circulation of African cultural heritage, legality, collecting history, and museum acquisition practices.
The gallery maintains extensive online archives and catalogues documenting hundreds of African objects, including Benin and Ife bronzes, Nok terracottas, Dogon sculptures, Baule figures, Fon objects, Moba figures, and other West African material.
For researchers interested in the history of the African art trade, Jaenicke represents a later generation of dealers compared with figures such as John J. Klejman. Whereas Klejman belonged to the postwar New York market of the 1950s–1970s, Jaenicke’s work has been shaped by contemporary concerns with field documentation, provenance research, restitution discussions, digital archives, and direct engagement with West African networks and artists.
This text is based on AI Information
Details
Ethnic group/ culture
Lobi
Country of Origin
Burkina Faso
Material
Wood
Sold with stand
No
Condition
Fair condition
Title of artwork
A wooden sculpture
Height
27 cm
Weight
410 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
AGB
AGB des Verkäufers. Mit einem Gebot auf dieses Los akzeptieren Sie ebenfalls die AGB des Verkäufers.
Widerrufsbelehrung
- Frist: 14 Tage sowie gemäß den hier angegebenen Bedingungen
- Rücksendkosten: Käufer trägt die unmittelbaren Kosten der Rücksendung der Ware
- Vollständige Widerrufsbelehrung
