African Tribal Face Mask Guro Face Mask Coast West African Tribal Art masks-5328

37.2/16 CM
A beatific face mask from the Guro people of the Cote d'Ivoire (Coast). Wood with paint and white pigment at the mouth. Possibly created by a known 20th century carver, but no provenance can be traced. One of the main ancestral female characters who appears at traditional dance celebrations, she smiles benignly, her eyes and brows raised in an expression of merriment. Her braided and plaited three-lobed coiffure is adorned with banded ring forms and cowrie shells, symbols of prosperity and status