Face Mask

Late 19th or early 20th century

Bete or Guro
Côte d’Ivoire
Coastal West Africa

Cross-cultural influences between the neighboring Bete and Guro peoples make it difficult to attribute masks such as this one by using only formal and stylistic criteria. A similar example once belonged to the avant-garde poet and artist Tristan Tzara, who, in the early 1900s, was among the first private collectors of African art in Paris. Scholars have suggested that both masks may have been carved by the same artist.

Status: On View, Gallery 137
Department: Arts of Africa

Culture: Bete
Title: Face Mask
Place: Côte d'Ivoire (Object made in)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: 1875–1925
Medium: Wood, pigment, chalk, monkey(?) fur, leather, metal, and twine
Dimensions: H.: 35.6 cm (14 in.)
Credit Line: Buckingham Fund
Reference Number: 1958.118

Margaret Plass, The African Image (The Toledo Museum of Art, 1959), p. 13, pl. 47.
Allen Wardwell, Primitive Art in the Collections of the Art Institute of Chicago (Art Institute of Chicago, 1965), n. pag., pl. 61.
Warren M. Robbins, African Art in American Collections (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, Inc., 1966), pp. 86-87, fig. 79.
Jacqueline Delange, Arts et Peuples de l’Afrique Noire (Paris: Editions Gallemard, 1967), p. 262, fig. 44. [The Art and Peoples of Black Africa, trans. Carol F. Jopling (New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., 1974), p. 68, fig. 44.]
William Fagg, African Sculpture, exh. cat. (Washington, D.C.: The National Gallery and the International Exhibitions Foundation, 1970), p. 110 , cat. 125 (ill).
Constantine Petridis et al., Speaking of Objects: African Art at the Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 2020), cat. no. 25, pp. 80-81 (ill.).
Constantine Petridis, “Making Objects Speak at the Art Institute of Chicago: A New Publication and a Refurbished Arts of Africa Gallery,” in Tribal Art magazine (No. 99, Spring 2021), p. 112 (ill.).

Toledo Museum of Art, The African Image, Feb. 1– 22, 1959, cat. pl. 47.
Art Institute of Chicago, Primitive Art in the Collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, Nov. 19, 1969–Feb. 8, 1970, cat. 61.
Washington, D.C., The National Gallery of Art, African Sculpture, 1970, cat. 125.

Julius Carlebach (died 1964), Carlebach Gallery, New York, N.Y., by 1958 [acquisition paperwork in curatorial file]; sold to the Art Institute, 1958.

Object information is a work in progress and may be updated as new research findings emerge. To help improve this record, please email . Information about image downloads and licensing is available here.

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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