Senufo · 12. April 2017
Collecting several objects from one carver gives the oportunity to compare the progress in technique, shape and proportion of a carver. The period of active working of Doh Soro is very short, because he suffered from mental disease at the age of 35. In average a Koulé starts to learn carving in the age of 12. Doh's timeframe to look at is about 20 years. Doh Soro had an immense feeling for shape and proportion right on in his first maternité statues. The volume of the bodies of the mother and...
Senufo · 10. April 2017
Upfront, there is no myth about the burning blades, it is the truth, that the Numu carve their objects with glowing knifes. The Numu are the smithers of the G'ué (also Gouin or Guin), a subgroup of the Senufo living around the City of Banfora in Burkina Faso. The legend says, that they own the fire and metal. The Numu can be compared with the Fono, the Senufo smithers working with wood, from Ivory Coast. Not much is known about the G'ué as of the Numu in particular, they are not researched as...
Senufo · 30. März 2017
At first view, it is not possible to say for sure, that these two statues belong to the Senufo style. Both are colored and the style elements are certainly not typically Senufo. But by word to mouth these two male statues were determined as Nyingife figures, which provide protection for the owner. Though these two look pretty extreme, the owner was special too. It is said, that this "man was not from this world". It is interpretation, what it could mean, not to be from this world. I could be a...
Senufo · 28. März 2017
Songuifolo Silué (*1914 +1986) was a very productive Fono from Sirasso. He carved for about 60 years, before he went blind in the early 1980ies. Beside the traditional style, in this area called the Ouézomon-style, Silué created in the 1930ies a minimalistic handwriting. As a famous master he had many orders. These modern looking Nyingife statues for instance might be the result of an effective production. In projection he and his assistants carved more than 1000 objects in his lifetime. The...
Senufo · 27. März 2017
"Ha! - there is not a second, better carver than Sabariko", said Zangvagnan Koné about his uncle Sabariko Koné in an interview with Karl-Heinz Krieg. Sabariko Koné (+1949) lived and worked in Ouézomon. Nearby Nafoun and Korhogo, Ouézomon was/is one of the carver's centres of the Senufo in Ivory Coast, where Koné also founded a school for carvers. Beside his two sons, Yéralo and Meinyerigué Koné, Tchètin Bêh Konaté was one of his students. Songuifolo Silué from Sirasso knew Sabariko...
Welcome to the first archive documentating the artwork of 26 named Senufo carvers from 1900 till today. We present antique and recent sculptures of so-called masters and not that famous carvers.
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