The post-war collecting trend
The post-war collecting trend was influenced by the interest of avant-garde artists for non-European art.
This was a strictly Italian phenomenon, involving a number of private collectors and scholars who didn’t experience the avant-garde period first-hand, but learned about it from books and, influenced by the artists of the so-called primitivism current and not only, of which they were often collectors, they turned to the collection of artifacts from Africa, the Pacific, and the Americas.
Artifacts from West Africa
In Africa, as elsewhere, images help make the world what it is; images shape the world: they help us tell ourselves apart from others, they support the power of words, they make the invisible visible.
Gomintogo mask (20th century) by Dogon PeopleMudec - Museum of Cultures
Sulaw mask (20th century) by Bamana PeopleMudec - Museum of Cultures
Statues, masks, ritualistic, and everyday objects mark the distance that separates human beings from the gods, ancestors from descendants, men from women, young people from the elderly, dominators from the dominated: they keep these subjectivities in opposition and, at the same time, allow them to communicate and relate to one another.
A case in point is that of masks that connect the spirits of the forest to village people.
Ciwara crest mask (20th century) by Bamana PeopleMudec - Museum of Cultures
Bo nun amuin zoomorphic helmet mask (20th century) by Baulé PeopleMudec - Museum of Cultures
Karin wemba mask (20th century) by Mossi PeopleMudec - Museum of Cultures
During sacrifices, initiation rites, divination rituals, wedding ceremonies, and funerals, masks as well as human- or animal- shaped figures, and other ritualistic objects promote women’s fertility and the bounty of harvests, administer justice, favor healing, help people prepare for the future and react to acts of witchcraft, and mediate the transition from one world to another or from one phase of life to the next.
Artifacts from Nigeria
and Central Africa
Traditional African societies were characterized by oral cultures. In the absence of writing, images and objects played a key role in reading knowledge or keeping it secret and passing it from one generation to the next.
Mbulu-ngulu reliquary figure (20th century) by Kota PeopleMudec - Museum of Cultures
African sculptures are not inert things to look at, they are active objects that help to either preserve or change the world to make it worth living in.
Mbulu-ngulu reliquary figure (20th century) by Kota PeopleMudec - Museum of Cultures
Zoomorphic mask (20th century) by Tikar PeopleMudec - Museum of Cultures
Therefore, a mask doesn’t simply hide the person wearing it, but rather transforms him, offering spirits and gods forms that they can inhabit; giving them a “body” means attracting them into the human world, making it easier to control them to one’s advantage.
Artifacts from the
Central Andes
Large panel (12th-15th century) by Chimu CultureMudec - Museum of Cultures
This exceptional large panel from Chimu culture (whose original size had to be even larger as it is cut on the 4 sides) was perhaps used to be hung in the palaces during funerary or ceremonial occasions.
It is worked with the complex technique of discontinuous warps and wefts.
The decoration is geometric (rhombuses, superimposed funnels) and zoomorphic (snake heads) regularly arranged in quadrants.
Panel or cloack with fringes (view 2)Mudec - Museum of Cultures
Panel or cloack with fringes (view 1)Mudec - Museum of Cultures
These artifacts, for the most part, come from either burial grounds or ceremonial centers.
Vase with mythological scene (5th-7th century) by Nazca CultureMudec - Museum of Cultures
The iconography is mysterious and at times frightening and some of its motifs are the same as those of the monumental sculptures of the great Chavin de Huantar ceremonial center located in Peru’s north-central highlands.
Sculptural vase (5th-7th century) by Nazca CultureMudec - Museum of Cultures
Fragment of thong (12th-15th century) by Cultura Chancay o Chimù?Mudec - Museum of Cultures
Fragment of thong (12th-15th century) by Cultura Chancay o Chimù?Mudec - Museum of Cultures
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