Wood, 121 cm high. These monumental figures, made of a very dense and heavy wood, are rhythm pounders, used during funerary rites of the important Senufo poro secret society. This is one of the very rare 'Janus' pounders. Most of the known examples originated in the northern Senufo region but there is a small corpus, commented on by Goldwater that points to a figure collected by Maesen in 1939 in Dembasso.

Provenance
Vincente Huidobro (1893-1948), Chili/Paris
Robert Hendrickx (1900-1965), Brussels, Belgium, by 1963
The Property of the Late Robert Hendrickx-Duchaine, 1982
Baron Freddy Rolin (1919-2001), Brussels, Belgium/New York, USA
Anonymous seller, 1990 (no provenance listed)
Rafael Roux, Paris, France
Private collection, Belgium

The Property of the Late Robert Hendrickx-Duchaine, Brussels 1982. Baron Freddy Rolin, Brussels & New York. Rafael Roux, Paris, France. Belgian private collection. Cfr. The Dembasso pounder is from Sotheby's Parke-Bernet (1966: lot 113). Two other known examples are a pair formerly in the Rubinstein collection collected in Tingrela (or Tengrela) and thirdly a male rhythm pounder (2004: lot 50).

Lit.:
'Masques en étain Sénoufo.' AAN, Nr.16, 1975.

Expo cat.: "Art d'Afrique dans les collections belges", by Albert Maesen & Huguette Van Geluwe, Tervuren: Musée royal de l'Afrique centrale, 1963:42, #237 (not illustrated)

Exhibition:
Tervuren, Belgium: "Art d'Afrique dans les collections belges", Musée royal de l'Afrique centrale, 29 June-30 October 1963