Colon Baoulé from Ivory Coast. Piece over 50 years old.
The colonizers were often represented through institutional functions such as doctor, policeman, gendarme or judge. But African humor, the characters keep their skin black and their hands in their pockets.
“Colonist” art was born at the beginning of the 20th century following orders from colonizers or natives who wanted to have figures “aping” on the colonists. The anthropomorphic sculptures are dressed “Western style” and covered in color. A distinction is made between settler art before the Second World War and after, up to the present day. The trend is now to achieve very stretched shapes, referred to as "filiform" which are painted in very bright colors.
Several centuries after the first representations of European merchants and soldiers who carried out transactions with the coastal peoples, the colonial presence deeply marked African statuary. In compliance with the canonical proportions in force in ethnic sculptures, the black man, armed, wearing the red chechia, the bolero and the baggy trousers made his appearance. The powers conferred on him within the administered communities made him a character whose good graces had to be attracted, including through the cult. Bambara in Mali, Baoule in the Ivory Coast, Ashanti in Ghana, Kamba in Kenya or Makondé in Mozambique integrated it into the "pantheon" of earthly powers, in the form of wooden sculptures, often polychrome. They are part of what was later called "the Settlers". This term designates the statuettes which, across Africa, represented the Western presence or influence. The production of this form of art would subsequently become widespread. It will be emptied of its religious character, under the effect of a Western commercial demand for arts and crafts. The authoritarian attributes of the skirmisher will fade from representation in favor of avatars of social success and other outward signs of modernity.
The settlers represent a category of people with whom the artists or their sponsors were constantly confronted in their daily lives: colonial administrators, soldiers, traders, missionaries.
At first, the settlers were statuettes dyed with vegetable dyes, representing whites as perceived by African craftsmen, through the filter of traditional aesthetic canons. The sculptors then left primitivism, to approach representations more faithful to reality, not devoid of a great deal of naivety, favoring detail up to the anecdote. Rifles, hats, boots, fashionable clothes, plated hairstyles, bras, bottles of wine... All is well !
Collecting settlers is like keeping Africa's often naive gaze on Western man.