Bamana Mask

This is a very old Bamana mask published in an important book. Hans Himmelheber (1908–2003) was a pioneering German ethnologist whose work fundamentally changed the study of African art. At a time when African sculpture was usually discussed anonymously—as expressions of a tribe or “style”—Himmelheber went into the field to meet the individual artists who made the works. In Côte d’Ivoire in the 1930s, he interviewed and observed sculptors, documenting their training, working methods, social position, commissions, and, importantly, the tension between tradition and individual invention. Himmelheber was one of the first scholars and researchers to view African artists as equals and as individual, creative artists. That emphasis on authorship, invention, and artistic personality remains one of his most important contributions. His Negerkunst und Negerkünstler (1960) synthesized observations from six African expeditions and became an important reference for the emerging discipline of African art history. This mask is featured on page 90 of this seminal publication, and we are lucky to represent it.