A Tanzanian, possibly Kerewe, Female Figure, Tanzania

the female figure standing with parted legs and elongated torso, surmounted by a narrow semispherical head with flat face; exceptionally fine aged patina with multiple layers of green, red and white pigment.

Peter Loebarth, Hameln
Fred Jahn, Munich

Iowa City, The University of Iowa Museum of Art, Kilengi: African Art from the Bareiss Family Collection, March 27 - May 23, 1999 (for additional venues see bibliography, Roy 1997)

Christopher D. Roy, Kilengi: African Art from the Bareiss Family Collection, Seattle, 1997, pp. 71 and 325, fig. 14
--, Kilengi. Afrikanische Kunst aus der Sammlung Bareiss, Hanover, 1997, pp. 75 and 329, fig. 14
Christopher D. Roy, "African Art from the Bareiss Collection", African Arts, Summer 1999, vol. XXXII, no. 2, p. 56, fig. 5

very good condition overall; age cracks throughout, two minor horizontal cracks on left side of head; wear and tear, nicks and scratches attesting to a long period of time in the field; exceptionally fine aged patina with multiple layers of green, red and white pigment, partially flaked off..
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Roy (1997: 325, text to fig. 14) notes: "This tall, thin, elegant, very abstract female figure is among the most remarkable of all of the figures from East Africa that have been published in the past decade, for it is a tour de force of representation of human form. A shallow concave face, in an oval head on a long neck, rises from an attenuated torso on which the arms so closely hug the sides that they are barely in relief. The hands extend slightly from the hips, with the female genitalia and the knees just rising from the surface of the long, thin column of the figure. Evidence of extensive handling around the neck indicates that the figure may have been used as a staff. In conception this is as radically abstract as the famous thin Nyamwezi staff in the collection of Willy Mestach in Brussels."