ANONYME.

Lot 48
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Estimation :
400 - 500 EUR
Result without fees
Result : 600EUR
ANONYME.
"Bakongo mask" (ca 1890). Wooden sculpture mounted on a black metal base. Size : 31 x 19 x 17,5 cm. Mask representing the white man, the foreman during the construction of the Belgian railway. Although the representation of travellers, merchants, soldiers and other European missionaries abound in the figurative arts of non-Western societies, they have been little studied. Nevertheless, as early as 1937, the German anthropologist Julius Lips became interested in this point of view and devoted a reference work to it "The Savage Hits Back". This Kongo mask (Democratic Republic of Congo) represents the white (Belgian) merchant or traveller in contact with this part of the country from the beginning of the 20th century. The Bakongo culture has integrated the "foreigner" into its cosmology, whether white or Asian. This mask, probably dating from the 1920s/1930s, was worn by a male dancer to show the characteristics and strangeness of the white man at the heart of Bakongo society.
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