A Kota Guardian Figure, "mbulu ngulu" Reliquary figure, "mbulu ngulu"
Kota-Ndass…
Description

A Kota Guardian Figure, "mbulu ngulu"

Reliquary figure, "mbulu ngulu" Kota-Ndassa, Gabon Mit Sockel / with base Wood, copper alloys. H 51 cm. Provenance: - Adalbert von Alföldy, Eislingen. - Liselotte Spuida, Pfronten. - Auction house Zemanek-Münster, Würzburg, 09.03.2019. - Swiss private collection, Vaud. The Kota peoples (formerly also called "Bakota") are located in northeastern Gabon to the Republic of Congo. They include mainly the Mahongwe, Shamaye, Shaké, Obamba, Wumbu and Ndassa. The Kota worshipped significant ancestors in ancestor worship, and the associated reliquary figures called "boho-na-bwete" are a particularly remarkable creation within African art. The figures, carved from wood and supplemented with metal applications of various colors, were embedded up to the neck in woven rattan baskets or simpler textile bales. These containers contained, in addition to earthly remains of the bodies or body parts of important ancestors, other power objects of all kinds (remnants of the respective personal possessions of an ancestor, amulets, valuables, medicine, healing utensils, animal relics, etc.). The task of the powerful relic keepers was to guard the irreplaceable reliquaries and protect them from harm. Relic baskets were witnesses and material evidence of the bloodline. Most of the time, the power-laden packages were venerated in secret and in designated reliquaries, although the physical memorials could also be presented publicly on the occasion of traditional rituals of the clan community. In order to activate the connection with the ancestors and to obtain their goodwill, the relics were also taken out of their baskets and became the object of ritual offerings and libations. The guardian figurines were originally kept for generations, with reliquaries being abandoned, collected by missionaries and colonial officials, exchanged, or even destroyed as religious beliefs changed throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Because the guardian figures were less sacred to the Kota than the relics, enterprising Kota at the same time also sold more or less skillfully executed relic figures, as well as those intended for the market, to interested art dealers and collectors. The time of origin of the specimen offered here, a head crowned by a magnificent coiffure with a concave face and a body reduced to the essentials, can be dated to the beginning of the last century due to its characteristics. Following the typification of Efraim Andersson (cf. Contribution ä l'ethnographie des Kuta. Uppsala University 1953), it belongs stylistically to the works of the Kota-Ndassa. The absence of the typical half-moon structure above the face is rare and found precisely on some Ndassa relic figures. An almost identical object is in the Brooklyn Museum in New York (inventory number probably #1537A), and an interesting comparison is offered by a specimen collected by Eduard Trezenem (1904-1957) before 1931 from the Musée du quai Branly in Paris (inv. no. 71.1931.87.19. The reverse, which always has a diamond shape in light relief and sometimes a small associated face in the form of a mask, was also left uncovered here. That Pablo Picasso himself owned two Kota reliquary figures in his collection of African art is not surprising. Works of art of this kind are among the most important sources of inspiration for the art of the 20th century: when Europe's artists began their search for liberation from occidental patterns of thought and art at the turn of the century, they favored a shift from perception-based to conceptual art. In the course of this debate, among other things, Cubism emerged as one of the important art movements of modernism. The avant-garde artists - among them André Derain, Maurice de Vlaminck, Henri Matisse - also received decisive inspiration from African works of art, such as those on display in France at the former Musée d'Ethnographie du Trocadéro in Paris. Further reading: - Chaffin, Alain & Françoise (1980). L'Art Kota. Les figures de reliquaire. Poitiers: Aubin. - Stepan, Peter (2006). Picasso's Collection of African and Oceanic Art. Masters of Metamorphosis. New York: Prestel. CHF 4 000 / 8 000 EUR 4 000 / 8 000

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A Kota Guardian Figure, "mbulu ngulu"

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