Additional information
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Kneeling Djenné Figure
This powerful and sensitive ceramic sculpture comes from the estate of the late Joseph Knopfelmacher, founder of the legendary Craft Caravan, an emporium of African art and artifacts located in NYC’s SoHo neighborhood. Joe began visiting Mali in the 1960s seeking local crafts and ethnographic works both new and old to import into the United States. He continued to do so on behalf of his store until he sold the business to two of his employees in 1985. Through his regular visits to Mali where he sought basketry, weavings and metalwork, Joe developed close working relationships with his dealer contacts. Through them Joe was introduced to Malian antiquities such as ancient Dogon ironwork and Djenné terracottas and bronzes. Awakened to a history and cultures of which he had up until then no knowledge, Joe became a collector of ancient Malian terracottas, which at the time were scarcely known in the West. Within Mali, such terracottas were known mostly from pottery sherds that littered the ground of various sites scattered across the Inner Niger Delta, such as on the outskirts of Old Djenné. At the time, restrictions on the unearthing of objects and their export were not yet in place, nor would there be any for years to come. This kneeling Djenné figure was in Joe’s collection when I first met him around 1991. It is in essentially two pieces, without any restoration filling in for loss. Close observers will note that the head retains more of the original, red pigmented slip coat than most of the body, and that the figure is generally more eroded and lacking of its slip coat toward its legs. This is likely because of the conditions of the figure’s centuries-long interment underground and of the pressures it was subjected to by moist soil each wet season as it was bathed in drenched earth. The seller guarantees that the head and body belong to each other and that the work is original and as described in every way, including its date of export from Mali sometime between 1965 and 1985. As is typical with Djenné figurative sculpture, the work is intensely expressive and offers itself in a deliberative pose. Snakes crawl over and out of its body, indicating it is a deeply spiritual work that addresses the human condition.
11.5″
