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Lot 113*

BEMBE-TIGONG FIGURE, CAMEROON

Arts of Africa, the Pacific & the Americas
17 December 2024, 16:00 CET
Brussels, Chaussée de Charleroi

€20,000 - €30,000

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BEMBE-TIGONG FIGURE, CAMEROON

wood
Height 56 cm

Provenance
Ulrich von Schroeder, Zurich
Galerie Walu, Zürich, 1984
Dr. Hans (1926-2010) & C. Baumann Collection, Bern-Muri, 1985-2010
Koller, Zürich, 5 December 2011, lot 309
Private collection, Switzerland, 2018

Literature
Gillon, W., Collecting African Art, 1979, p.89, fig.104

Footnotes

The Mbembe of northern Cameroon are a small ethnic group living just to the south of the border with Nigeria. Paul Gebauer, who travelled to Cameroon in 1931 as a Baptist missionary and served there for 30 years, wrote of the Mbembe: "Nowhere else have we associated with folks so carefree as the Mbembe people. Nights without palm wine and dancing were rare. Palm oil trading gave the people wealth and leisure" (Gebauer, P., Art of Cameroon, Portland, 1979, p.37).

A relatively small corpus of carved figures from the Mbembe, numbering approximately thirty, are highly expressive in form often with gaping mouths, the majority with the arms carved in relief. Some, as is the case with the present example, have a carved cavity in the side, perhaps to hold offerings. All show considerable signs of erosion suggesting great age. A figure from this corpus, in the Josette and Jean-Claude Weill collection (Hourdé, C.-W. and Weill, J.-P. (Eds.), In Praise of the Human Form: Arts of Africa, Oceania and America, Milan, 2019, pp.94-95, 269) has been radiocarbon dated to AD 1646-1800.

The earliest recorded date of collection for an Mbembe figure appears to be a figure formerly in the collection of Harold Rome which had previously been sold by Galerie Nicaud in 1965 (Sotheby's, New York, 20 May 1987. Lot 88). Many of the known figures from the corpus were collected in the field by Alain Dufour in the early 1970s.

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VASE MAYA CYLINDRIQUE EN TERRE CUITE Mexique, Culture Maya, Période préclassique, 500-900 ap. J.C.
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