Mbuti Painting, D.R. Congo – SOLD

Painted Bark Cloth 
Mbuti peoples, D.R. Congo, Ituri Forest
20th century
Pounded inner bark of Ficus sp.; Rothmannia whitfielii fruit dye and charcoal 
22 x 12 inches  (56 x 38 cm)
Published:  Georges Meurant, Mbuti Design (1995) as a line drawing, page 142, no.7.
 
The hallucinatory play of dotting is among the most instinctive and ancient of Mbuti art styles. Said to evoke the spots of the totemic leopard, this simple element affords total compositional freedom where such signification or reference is incidental to the repetitive pulsing activity of stamping the bark cloth with a tiny dot of black dye applied to the tip of a twig. In this freeform arrangement, the “ant trails” meander in all directions, or emanate in liquidy drips and dissolving lines that follow invisible contours and folds in the fibrous plane. 
SOLD