Mask (Kple Kple or Kouassi Gbe) (late 1800s-early 1900s): Art, History and Details

Mask (Kple Kple or Kouassi Gbe) (late 1800s-early 1900s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

This kple kple mask belongs to the first of four pairs of masks that entertain as part of a performance sequence in the goli dance. The male in each pair dances first. The masks are worn by young boys in a rapid stamping dance. The masqueraders alternate with each other and watch their partners perform. The head of the male kple kple is painted red, whereas the female, like this example, is colored black.

Object facts

• Title: Mask (Kple Kple or Kouassi Gbe)
• Date: late 1800s-early 1900s
• Culture: Africa, West Africa, Côte d’Ivoire, Baule-style carver
• Type: Mask
• Technique: Wood, resin, and paint
• Dimensions: Overall: 40.7 cm (16 in.)
• Collection: African Art
• Department: African Art
• Accession number: 1975.155

A detail from the museum

The wearer of this mask would secure it on his face by biting onto a (now-missing) piece of rope attached to the back.

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. 80.
• CMA 1976, "1975 Year in Review." Bulletin of The Cleveland Museum of Art 63, no. 3, cat. 22.
• Petridis, Constantijn. South of the Sahara: selected works of African art. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2003.

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.