688 - Copper relief African woman, woman with drum and fringed skirt in profile, repoussé, patinated

Copper relief African woman, woman with drum and fringed skirt in profile, repoussé, patinated Copper, repoussé and with red-brown patina, copper relief African woman, upright rectangular panel, a woman in profile facing right worked in repoussé, head thrown back, with neck rings, upper arm ring with zigzag band and bracelets, the left arm raised with open hand, the right hand with spread fingers above a drum held in front of the body with tapering body decorated with lozenge and zigzag pattern, short fringed skirt, rings on the ankles, barefoot, unsigned, four fixing holes in the corners, condition commensurate with age, rubbed in places, panel bent, edges dented, lower area compressed, 84.5x34 cm (HxW). In repoussé the copper sheet is shaped cold with hammer and punches, each recess struck from the back emerging as a raised form on the front; the technique is documented since Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt, and copper is particularly well suited to it. In Lubumbashi in Congo a school of such copper reliefs arose in the 1960s and 1970s, combining African motifs with the material copper and shown at international exhibitions. The woman with drum is also one of the motifs of such copper pictures.