This is the rating and price for Ibo, Nigeria Standing Male Figure Wood, Pigments Ib, 2002

Description : IBO, Nigeria Standing Male Figure Wood, pigments Ibo (Igbo) subsistence farmers live in dense forest on both sides of the Lower Niger River in southeast Nigeria. They are politically fragmented, with no hereditary leadership or status for individuals, enterprise and material success are prized. Ibo society is hierarchical, and a man progresses upward by accomplishments as well as age. Ibo adaptability and enterprise ensured their success as traders and civil servants under the British colonial administration of Nigeria. Extended families build shrines to their tutelary or guardian deities, the Alusi, and these shrines accumulate standing male and female figures representing particular ancestors. Some of the figures approach life size. They are carved with realistic proportions, are bilaterally symmetrical and posed frontally, with legs slightly apart, arms separate from torsos and down at the sides with the hands turned palms up and slightly outstretched. Figures may be clothed, and are usually painted with a variety of earth pigments, including red, ochre, kaolin white and black on raised scarification patterns. The raised black forehead scars on the present figure denote the automatically higher status of a firstborn child. Relief-carved representations of ivory bracelets or metal anklets also indicate higher status of the particular ancestor represented by the carving. Over time, most shrine figures are exposed to the elements and receive repeated applications of pigments to revive their protective capacities, resulting in a weathered surface seen on many of them, including the present figure. Provenance: From the Estate of Liz Claiborne and Arthur Ortenberg Sotheby's, African and Oceanic Art, November 15, 2002, lot 46 Height: 45 ½ inches
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