Mumuye Statue, Nigeria

Acquired in Cameroon jointly by Philippe Guimiot and Jacques Kerchache in 1968-69
Philippe Guimiot, Brussels
Private European Collection, acquired from the above in 2001

Gabi Imhof-Weber, Faszination Afrika: Meisterwerke aus europäischen Privatsammlungen. Berichte über die Sammlungen von Fritz Koenig, Monique und Jean Paul Barbier-Mueller und Philippe Guimiot, Bayern 3 (film), 1995

The art of the Mumuye people is one of the most celebrated and innovative sculptural traditions from Africa.  Their distinctive and ingenious mode of representing the human form as a set of geometric volumes captured the wider attention of the outside world at a relatively late date.  At the end of the 1960s, the anarchy caused by the Nigerian-Biafran War in the south of Nigeria added to the existing abandonment of traditional religious practices. It was at this time that Philippe Guimiot discovered the extraordinary statuary of the Mumuye people. Philippe Guimiot and Jacques Kerchache were the first to reveal this major form of African art to an audience of Western connoisseurs. This work, acquired by Philippe Guimiot and Jacques Kerchache jointly in 1968-69, is one of the most powerful of its kind.

One of the only Western art historians to witness these statues being used in their original context was Arnold Rubin, who noted (in Vogel 1981: 155): "The high degree of stylistic diversity is paralleled by the variety of functions of Mumuye figures: some were used as oracles, others in connection with healing, and still others reinforced the status of important elders as embodiments of vaguely conceived tutelary spirits.  Sometimes, one figure was employed in two or more of these capacities.  A particular function cannot be correlated with size, style, or other formal attributes."

The dynamism of the figure's volumes are strikingly reminiscent of the vocabulary of Cubism, and the plastic study of movement undertaken by modern artists in general.  Stelzig (in Wick and Denner 2010: folio VIII) observed: "In view of their subtle configuration and overall design Mumuye sculptures remind the viewer not only of Brancusi, but also of Giacometti - or, to put it more correctly: many of Brancusi's and Giacometti's works are reminiscent of the magnificent works of these African sculptors."  Prior to Guimiot's discovery of Mumuye statuary in situ in the late 1960s, the only accessible example of this tradition in Western museums was a figure that entered the British Museum in 1922 (inv. no. "Af1922,0610.2", see Rubin 1984: 597).  There it did not fail to capture the attention of the young British sculptor Henry Moore, who studied its volumes in careful drawings made in his notebook of 1922-24 (ibid.)  See also Rubin (1984: 595 et. seq.) for further discussion.