Male figure

Our statuette, carved with a lithic tool, is depicted in the classic kandimbong position , standing with arms detached from the body and hands resting on the thighs. Legs slightly bent. The large forehead supports a headdress. The long, curved nose, with the tip joining the umbilicus, indicates that we have here a representation of a clan ancestral spirit.

This statuette acted as a protective charm. Individually owned, it brought its owner luck in hunting and war, as well as in love.

Hermann Mark Lissauer was born in Hamburg, Germany. A Holocaust survivor, he and his father worked in the sugar cane and rattan industry in Angoram on the Sepik River from the 1950s to the early 1970s. It was from this town that he made several expeditions to collect a large number of objects. He sold to major private collections and museums around the world, including the Rockefeller Museum, the British Museum and the Musée national des arts d’Afrique et d’Océanie, now part of the Musée du quai Branly.

Price:€9,500