A rare New Guinea, Upper Sepik River, Washkuk hills, Nukuma male figure

carved from dense kwila wood, the standing figure with parted, muscular legs beneath the narrow torso with ridged breastplate framed by thick arms carved to the sides with armbands encircling the upper portion, the whole supporting the enormous elliptical head with concave facial plane, a chevron-shaped mouth and cylindrical eyes bisected by a sagittate nose leading to a shelf-like brow and two arches carved in low relief; exceptionally fine aged and weathered surface, encrusted in areas and covered with black, white and red pigments.

Collected by the owner at Ablatak, New Guinea, 1962

John Pasquarelli began his work in Papua New Guinea as a cadet patrol officer in 1960 and shortly thereafter became a field-collector of Sepik River works of art. Many of the works he collected have gone into the collections of institutions such as the Basel Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. See Greub (1985: plate 6), Newton (1978: 167) and Newton (1971: figure 21) for illustrations of other works collected by Pasquarelli. See also Howarth (2003: 110-115) for more information on Pasquarelli and his incredibly diverse career.

Cf. Newton (1971: 96, figure 148) for a Nukuma style Yina figure with facial features almost identical to this male figure.

Figurative sculpture from this area along the Sepik River is rare; more rare still are representations of male figures. According to Bowden (personal communication 2004), a large-scale, free-standing male figure such as this most likely served as a display figure in part of the architectural ornamentation in a men's house. The figure is probably a representation of a named mythological figure or a clan spirit in anthropomorphic form. See Bowden (1983: figure 31) for a related figure (in the background) in situ.