Ancient Vuvi mask (Gabon) - Lot 124

Ancient Vuvi mask (Gabon) Wood. H. 35 cm With its large, almost flat, shield-shaped face covered in white pigments and its minimalist features, this beautiful mask fits perfectly into the small corpus attributed to the Vuvi, an isolated population living in the mountainous regions of the Chaillu massif. These masks represent mythical-legendary entities and are linked to the initiation societies of the Bwete Disumba and Mureli initiation societies. Note the rare detail of the doubling of the curved eyebrow line. Provenance : - Collected by M. Mayet in Gabon between 1920 and 1922 - Gérard Lévy (Paris) Bibliography: For more details on this type of mask, Charlotte Grand-Dufay " les Vuvi et leurs masques " in Tribal Art Magazine n° 67 Spring 2013.