A look at Lega

The Lega Culture
Nehamba Mask sourced from Angola
Size in cm: 32 x 20 x 8
Weight: 300g.

The Lega Culture are originated around the north-eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The are known as a fishing, hunting and farming culture. They are well known for their carvings in sculptures and mask-making, especially in wood and ivory. Their participation in an association called “Bwami”, is a very vital element of the Lega Living. Lega’s strive to a higher and higher advancement within the Bwami association through exhibiting moral excellence.

Masks like these are used to signify a individuals rank as a form of an emblem within the Bwami association. Often they are worn during celebrations and ceremonies and run in conjunction with the displaying of other masks in groups. The most common Bwami mask is a small wooden face with a beard attached to it, as the sample seen in image. Only the two highest ranking grades have ivory objects as emblemised features. The senior kindi which normally instruct the younger initiates also wear a hat combined with elephant-tail hairs and cowrie shells. These specific masks are passed through the generational up comings within the association as they are initiated into the various grades.

African Art

African Art in General

With African Art we normally mean the African Art created in Africa to the south of the Sahara. The Arabian-Islamic African Art stamped north of Africa differs from the artistic African Art forms of expression of the south. Still one may not suppose that in whole of Africa a homogeneous, uniform artistic creating dominates. The people living here introduce all her own, on the regional level different African Art traditions

One can distinguish two main forms of expression of African art: Graphical African Art and Formed or Sculptural African Art. Under the artistic matrix whom African artists used for Formed or Sculptural African Art ‘wood’ stands at the foremost place. Above all west niche and Central Africa's niche people reached during the production from wooden African Art a high step. The tools with which the artists worked on African Art and work till this day are knives, gouges and scrapers.

From these wooden African Art sculptures historical reports hardly exist, because the tropical climate and pests like termites and Insects which degrade wooden material destroyed almost all older objects of the traditional African art.
Beside wood for African Art, other materials are used only sporadically: Pieces of African Art from stone, tone, loam and ivory, are limited to few cultures. The use of metals like bronze and brass in the wax sow's glaze procedure was spread by the African centre to surrounding West-African areas. Besides, iron was hardly used in African Art.

Materials like phloem, fibers, reeds, plant fibre and rods are used primarily in connection with the mask African Art plasticism.
All decisive subject of the figural African Art is the human shape, sometimes morphed with animals are often shown only in the ornaments by African Art devices and African Art vessels. In the mask African Art heads are shown by people as well as by animals, often in hybrid formal presentations.

In southern Africa one finds till this day in the former settlement areas of the San culture prominent African Art works of the graphic African Art forms. In the area of the today's Sahara to wise rock engravings of majority bulls like antelopes, giraffes, zebras or elephants on the savanna-like conditions which have ‘roamed’ here before thousands of years.
African Art reaches Europe only during the end of the 20th Century as a report of independent culture acceptance. Since then they were investigated by researchers, adventurers, missionaries and colonial officials, were collected and mostly brought in the possession of European and American museums and collections, as well as, ending up in African Art collections (eg. Picasso who studied the African Art abstracts). Up to few exceptions these African Art objects are younger than 150 years. Nowadays discriminating concepts like primitivism, black's sculpturalism (Carl Einstein) or the French kind “negre” were catchwords of the classical modern age which marked of African Art Identity by clear forms and timeless aura.

The African Art is inseparable with African Religion, African Mythology and African Rituals. African ‘Art’ as an end in itself hardly seems. Particularly the ancestor worship in traditional African religions takes a prominent position in the African Art, the world of the forefathers and gods should live on in the African Art. Masks, sculptures and figures are used as a protection against bad forces, bad karma and illnesses. The masks are in African image identically with the supernatural powers which exercise among other things a social controlling function and provide for the protection of the public order.

The roots of the African Art can be traced back till the African early history: African Art Rock engravings in Niger are about 6,000 years old, for example. The oldest sculptures which have been preserved were created by the Nok culture in today's Nigeria around 500 before Christ. The Pharaoh's niche Egypt also influenced the African Art artistic creation of objects in southern Africa. With the spreading of Islam in the 13th century originated new methods of the African Art creating. The new bronze casting and brass downpour, often decorated with ivory or precious stones and in new, Islamic influenced forms became a highly respected in completely West Africa. Artists were often occupied in the king's courts of the centrally governed African empires (e.g., Benin).