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Niongom Figure
Mali
Niongom culture (Pre-Dogon)
Bandiagara Escarpment
Carved wood (minu)
15th – 16th century (C14 dating)
Height: 20 in. (51 cm)
Ex Galerie Duperrier, Paris, 1968
Ex collection Mr. & Mrs. Harold Rome, New York
Ex Sotheby’s New York, 20 May 1987 lot 40
Ex collection Hélène Leloup, Paris
Ex private collection, Paris
Literature
Illustrated in: Dogon Statuary, Hélène Leloup, Ed. Amez, 1994, pl. 29
Yale University Art Gallery – The Yale-van Rijn Archive of African Art #0015445
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This superb and archaic anthropomorphic sculpture depicts a standing figure with the arms resting along the body. Following the natural curvature of the tree branch from which it was carved, this sculpture is redolent with poetry and sensuality.
The Niongom, a Pre-Dogon people with mysterious origins, is said to have been contemporaries and close neighbors of the Tellem, before the arrival of the Dogon-Mande on the plateau of the Bandiagara cliff in the 15th century.
Niongom figures were found in abandoned altars and are particularly rare.
According to Hélène Leloup, who studied and illustrated this Niongom figure ("Dogon Statuary", plate 29), this sculpture is the oldest of its type known today (carbon-14 dating: approximately 450 years of age)
The Niongom, a Pre-Dogon people with mysterious origins, is said to have been contemporaries and close neighbors of the Tellem, before the arrival of the Dogon-Mande on the plateau of the Bandiagara cliff in the 15th century.
Niongom figures were found in abandoned altars and are particularly rare.
According to Hélène Leloup, who studied and illustrated this Niongom figure ("Dogon Statuary", plate 29), this sculpture is the oldest of its type known today (carbon-14 dating: approximately 450 years of age)
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