West African Senufo Tribal Seated Fertility Sculpture. Humanoid feminine figure seated and breastfeeding a child while balancing a basket on her head, with a seabird resting on top of the basket, carved in the traditional style. 

Size: 7 1/2 x 7 1/2 x 37 in. 

#7012 . 

The Senufo people are a West African ethnolinguistic group living in a region spanning the northern Ivory Coast. They emerged as a distinct linguistic group some time within the 15th Century. The wars and violence as Muslims attempted to convert the populace led to their migration into their contemporary regions, but their sovereign control of the area collapsed in 1898 with the arrival of the French. Predominantly agriculturalists, they cultivate a wide variety of crops, including cotton and cash crops for the international market. As musicians they are world renowned, playing a multitude of wind, stringed, and percussive instruments. Senufo communities use a caste system, in which the farmers, known as Fo no, and the artisans are at opposite ends of the spectrum. The term artisan encompasses blacksmiths (Kule), carvers (Kpeene), brasscutters (Tyeli), potterers, and leather workers. Training to become an artisan takes about eight years, starting with an apprenticeship where the trainees create objects not associated with the religion of the Senufo and then culminating with an initiation process where they obtain the ability to create ritual objects. They are superb carvers of wood sculpture, masks, and figurines, passing their knowledge from one generation to the next within the subgroups found in each village. Typically each Senufo has an independent male secret society called Poro with elaborate initiation rituals in a patch of forest they consider as sacred. The rituals involve masks, figurines, and equipment that the Senufo people carve and are symbolic of events, beings, and even concepts in the Senufo mythos. The secrecy has helped the Senufo people to preserve their culture in times of wars and political pressure, and Senufo beliefs include ancestral and nature spirits, who may be contacted. A common form is the hornbill, which according to their traditions was one of the first living creatures on Earth, symbolizing fertility, strength, and the importance of passing knowledge on from the old to the young. They also believe in a Supreme Being, who is viewed in a dual female-male form and can be carved in many ways: an Ancient Mother, Maleeo, and a male Creator God, Kolotyolo. The art of the Senufo people inspired 20th Century European artists such as Pablo Picasso and Fernand Léger, with the proto-Cubism and masks found in Senufo pieces being a significant influence on Picasso’s African period. The term Senufo has therefore become a category in its own right to art collectors and scholars, sometimes a catch-all term for the artistic traditions of West Africa, and older pieces of Senufo art are found in many leading museums of the world.