Late 19th or early 20th century
Bete or Guro Côte d'Ivoire Coastal West Africa
Côte d'Ivoire
Cross-cultural influences between the neighboring Bete and Guro peoples make it difficult to attribute masks such as this one by using only formal and stylistic criteria. A similar example once belonged to the avant-garde poet and artist Tristan Tzara, who, in the early 1900s, was among the first private collectors of African art in Paris. Scholars have suggested that both masks may have been carved by the same artist.
Wood, pigment, chalk, monkey(?) fur, leather, metal, and twine