Helmet Mask (early to mid-1900s): Art, History and Details

Helmet Mask (early to mid-1900s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

The iconography of this helmet mask is comprised of sculpted renderings of different animal attributes including a ram's horns, a warthog's tusks, a crocodile's mouth, and a hyena's snout. Carved between the long antelope horns is a miniature chameleon that holds an abstract wing-shaped motif called mangele. Intended to impress and terrify, the sculpture's fearsome aesthetic alludes to the mask's power as an anti-sorcery device.

Object facts

• Title: Helmet Mask
• Date: early to mid-1900s
• Culture: Western Sudan, Ivory Coast, Senufo, 20th century
• Type: Mask
• Technique: wood
• Dimensions: Overall: 122 cm (48 1/16 in.)
• Collection: African Art
• Department: African Art
• Accession number: 1972.336

Collection credit

Gift of Katherine C. White

Further reading listed by the museum

• Fagg, William, and Cleveland Museum of Art. 1968. African Tribal Images; the Katherine White Reswick Collection. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, no. 18.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.