A Lobi Figure, "bateba phuwe" Lot n° 11

Figure, "bateba phuwe Lobi, Burkina Faso Mit Sockel / with base wood. H 56 cm. W 17 cm. Provenance: - Gallery Jernander, Brussels. - Swiss private collection (1986). bateba shrine figures of the Lobi combined human-like appearance with superhuman qualities. They protected their owners from inaccessible realms such as evil thoughts and witchcraft. Dr. Stephan Herkenhoff, Lobi collector and expert on the subject, writes about the Lobi in "Anonymous Carvers of the Lobi": "Originally, the Lobi came from Ghana. Around 1770 they partly moved to Burkina Faso and about 100 years later also to the Ivory Coast. Today, about 180,000 Lobi live in this three-country corner. In 1898, the French colonial rulers grouped the Lobi and their neighboring tribes such as Birifor, Dagara, Teguessie (Thuna), Pougouli and Gan under the term "Cercle du Lobi" for administrative reasons. It is of this community that we speak today when we speak of the "art of the Lobi". A peculiarity of African art is that the carvers usually remain anonymous. It is usually tribal art, which must follow a fixed canon, and only in rare cases individual creations. Therefore, the carvers are also rarely known by name. Collectors of African art primarily ask themselves from which ethnic group an object originates. The name of individual artists is not so important, in contrast to the customs in the field of Western art. In the case of most tribes, the range of variation in pictorial works is relatively small. The appearance of sculptures or masks varied little from carver generation to carver generation. In this respect, Lobi art is a real exception. Here there is a very great iconographic variety both in terms of the size of the statues and in terms of the different elaboration of the details (mouth, nose, eyes, ears, hairstyles, arm posture, representation of the chest area, navel, sex, legs, hands, feet, etc.). One reason for this is the structure of the tribe. It is not a centrally directed polity, but an acephalous society. Thus, the Lobi do not know any kings or cities, but only clan chiefs and loose groupings of fortress-like dwellings (called sukalas). Thus, there was little exchange of information over long distances. This led to the development of many local styles and sub-styles within the Lobi style convention. It is also not easy to assign an object to a specific place of origin. This is due to the fact that Lobi families abandon the place of residence after 2-3 generations because of depleted fields and seek a new area where they find unconsumed soil. So it comes that one also gets different answers on the spot in Africa if one asks locals where a statue comes from (oral communication of Thomas Waigel). Another peculiarity in the creation of Lobi statues comes from the fact that, in principle, any man can become a carver." Further reading: - Katsouros, Floros and Sigrid; Herkenhoff, Stephan and Petra (2006). Anonymous carvers of the Lobi. Hannover: Ethnographika Hannover. - Scanzi, Giovanni Franco (1993). L'art traditionnel Lobi. Milano: Ed. Milanos. CHF 1 500 / 3 000 EUR 1 500 / 3 000