M. Laranjeira, R. De Areia, R. Kaehr - Masques d'Angola - 2009

For 80 years, the MEN has housed collections assembled during the two Swiss Scientific Missions in Angola (1928-1929 and 1932-1933), including 55 masks that include almost all the types existing in the Cokwe, Ngangela and Nyemba cultures. Among these, there is a majority of ephemeral and fragile items that not only were not destroyed in the course of rituals, as it is often the case, but have withstood the vagaries of a perilous transport and survived the malice of time. Red ochre and kaolin with fabric and strips of paper still contrast frankly with the black resin covering a bark fabric that tends a branching frame. The authors describe the pieces one by one in notes illustrated with photographs, gathering all the documentation possible. They are still eager to find and gather in one corpus all the specimens scattered over time, thus showing the diversity of both the traditional achievements of the 1930s and the productions already intended for a tourist clientele.

Many colour illustrations.

New book.