Tapa maro, Lake Sentani West Papua, Indonesia Beaten wood bark. Height: 74 cm Length: 50 cm Provenance: H. Heynes Collection H. Heynes Collection Loed Van Bussel Collection Amsterdam (Inv ZM035) The Jolika collection of Marcia & John Friede, USA. Traditionally made and worn around the waist by married women, painted bark loincloths symbolized the passage to adulthood in Lake Sentani societies. Maro bark cloth is made from the bark of a Ficus tree. The outer layer is removed to preserve the inner strip of bark, which is beaten on a stone anvil to flatten the fibers. The resulting smooth, uniform piece of cloth is soaked in water and then dried. Our example, rectangular in shape and beautifully preserved in polychrome, is decorated with a repetition of typical fouw (spiral) motifs. This is the original motif, present on the very first maro before the appearance of more figurative designs featuring aquatic creatures such as fish, turtles or lizards, or references to the art of fishing. Natural pigments applied to bark are mixed with water and plant resin. Black (nokoman), made from soot or charcoal, is used for the spiral patterns, which stand out against a deep red background (nime-nime or mixed), obtained from earth or red stone. Touches of white pigment (keleuman), made from lime, add brightness to the overall composition. Maro's great fascination with Western artists in the 1930s can be explained by the close ties between author and art dealer Jacques Viot and the Surrealist artistic circle. A keen traveler with a passion for the exotic and a profoundly anti-colonial stance, he brought back to Europe, on behalf of the Parisian gallery owner Pierre Loeb, with whom he had become indebted, numerous objects as well as some surprising tapa maro collected near Lake Sentani, a territory of New Guinea strongly influenced by Indochina. Guinea, with strong Indonesian influences. Loeb and André Breton built up extensive collections of Oceanic art, which were exhibited in Paris and New York, introducing artists such as Ernst, Miró and Matisse to the painted bark cloth they acquired. Responding to the Surrealist quest to explore the dream world, the supreme union of art and dream, this art form appears as the revelation of a "magical state", a "vision of beyond what the eye can perceive". (Webb, V.-L., Ancestors of the Lake, Art of Lake Sentani and Humboldt Bay, New Guinea, 2011). Henk Heynes, the first purchaser of this work, was, in the 1940s, the founder and director of the Technical School in Hollandia, the capital of the province of Papua - renamed Jayapura in 1968.