African Arts Gallery

This mask offers a fan-shaped headdress framed by faces, eyebrows and a beard meticulously streaked with decorative motifs, brass applications adorn the cheeks. Satin black patina, small accidents. Height on base: 45 cm.
The African art of the Baoulé, an Akan group established in the South-East of Ivory Coast, includes a vast range of masks renowned for their quality, finesse and symmetry. On the one hand, these African masks transposing the main facial features of a very beautiful young girl or a remarkable man, "portrait masks", which were exhibited during particularly theatrical events where women played a major role, the other masks of conjuration and initiation, intervening during ceremonies which were forbidden to them. Sacred masks, they could endanger their lives, or at most their fertility. Yohouré sculpture is also imbued with the influences of their neighbors, combining sometimes foreign decorative elements with the great finesse of execution which characterizes them.