Old Dance Mask, Mungugumor, Yuat River

Chris Boylan Oceanic Art

OLD DANCE MASK, Mundugumor people, Yuat River, Lower Sepik River, PNG

39 x 19 x 10 cm

Ex-collection professor Tom Arthur ; purchased at Galleries Primitif, Sydney in 1972.

This early dance mask shows many of the bold sculptural elements that make Mundugumor sculpture so forceful. Reduced to a near-abstract triangular form, the mask possesses a strong graphic presence with an overall surface patina that shows age and sustained ceremonial use.

Mundugumor mask features – the heavy brows, exaggerated nose and ears – are designed to intimidate and to assert spiritual potency within ritual contexts. Traditionally such masks are painted in pastel orange and pink colours in large blocks; here they have used the same colours but in vertical stripes. Compact in scale yet powerful in presence, this mask is a particularly evocative example of Mundugumor art, balancing abstraction, menace and its unique expression in a highly resolved form.

SOLD

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