Maternity

The figure of motherhood is one of the oldest and most representative in Africa. She is depicted in this statue with her son behind her back. They do not usually represent a particular woman, but a woman who dispenses life and food, since their primary function is to give life and preserve it.

Women are a symbol of social life as they are the essential link in the lineage, the backbone of the family and often an essential element in the transmission of inheritance and, always, the protective element of children. Breast milk is not only a food of life, it is the sap that carries out the transmission of fundamental human values. In many cultures, women are the depository of tradition and the safeguarding of genealogies. He is often, divine, healer and connoisseur of the mysteries of nature clothed with great magical powers. The African woman, and especially the mother, is far from the image of her in the West.

The child, behind his back, in the African way, but without a cloth to hold him, occupies a very secondary place in terms of his aesthetic quality, since in all African maternity homes it is a question of enhancing the figure of the mother.

Former motherhood give very different from the usual ones, less slender, with a practically flat face in which the lips protrud, the nose in the form of a concoction tape in ear and ciliary arches. His head looks an artistic hairstyle. The aesthetic canon varies from that used in later years, the body is just double the head. The expression of the face and the position of the hands indicate an imprecatory attitude. Bracelets carved on wrists, arms, ankles and legs, as well as a double-turn necklace on the neck and waist. Curv breastsAs a child, behind his back, he is holding on to the mother's shoulders. Broken feet, dark, earthy patina.