Easily recognizable by its typical small oval head, this “Kota” is a textbook example of the Sango type, found in Central Gabon among the Sango people living in the Chaillu Mountains region. A well-known postcard featuring a staged photograph taken by Prosper Augouard at the beginning of the 20th century depicts a Sango nganga (or diviner/healer) with three similar figures, their relic bundles covered with strips of hide. This type of Sango reliquary figure was locally known as a “mbumba”, evoking both the words for “rainbow” and “snake”, while also a term used by several Gabonese cultures to designate a powerful object capable of bringing fortune, happiness and success. Describing a similar “mbumba”, Frédéric Cloth has suggested its particular stick-like shape was deliberately chosen to evoke the image of a snake or “mbumba” (cf. Christie’s, Paris, 21 November 2017, lot 90).

Typically for the Sango type, the stylized and flattened oval face is set atop an elongated cylindrical neck. The face, with its wide-eyed, piercing gaze marked by two European buttons, is adorned with horizontal strips of copper. Curvilinear copper elements decorated with dots (a very rare feature) outline the eyebrows and chin, while the small nose is covered with a copper sheet. The mouth is absent. Small half-moon shaped ears protrude laterally at eye level – the only feature not covered in copper. A cylindrical hair tress extends from the back of the head. The long neck is entirely wrapped with copper strips. The diamond-shaped base, carved in broad flat planes, is inserted into a reliquary bundle made of vegetal fibers and containing relics. This magnificent figure likely dates from the 19th century. According to Frédéric Cloth, its large size makes it a “communal” example, in contrast with smaller ones for “private use” (personal communication, 27 July 2025).

This Sango “Kota” once belonged to George Frédéric Keller (1899-1981), a major Swiss collector and art dealer. Keller opened his first gallery in Paris in 1926 and one of his most important clients from 1928 onward was the American collector Albert C. Barnes. Keller regularly exhibited Salvador Dali’s works from 1931 until 1963. At Galerie Georges Petit, he organized a Matisse exhibition in 1931 and the following year an even larger show with 250 artworks by Pablo Picasso. He became a partner in New York’s Bignou Gallery Inc. in 1936 before joining forces with Roland Balay to open the Carstairs Gallery, which he managed from 1949 to 1963. He was passionate about African art, acquiring his first sculpture at the age of 19, purchasing works from art dealers and collectors such as Ernest Ascher, Josef Müller, Han Coray, Charles Ratton, Louis Carré, André Lefèvre, Helmut Gernsheim, Ralf Nash, René Rasmussen, Emil Storrer, and Paul Guillaume. In 1931, he was appointed as an appraiser alongside Charles Ratton and Louis Carré for the sale of the André Breton and Paul Eluard collections (Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 2/3 July 1931). Keller was a major collector of his time and acquired paintings by artists such as Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse, Chaïm Soutine, Amedeo Modigliani, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Salvador Dalí, Georges Rouault, André Derain, Maurice Utrillo, Pierre Bonnard, Raoul Dufy, Fernand Léger, and Pablo Picasso. However, African art gradually became his main interest and in 1981 he donated his collection of modern art to the Fine Arts Museum of Bern, in order to live surrounded only by his African sculptures – a collection he bequeathed to his friend Paolo Morigi (1939-2017). In June 2003, this Sango figure was part of the famous “Kota” exhibition at the Parisian Galerie Ratton-Hourdé, later to be sold by the gentleman-dealer Jacques Germain to Guy Laliberté, founder of Cirque du Soleil. In 2012, Louis Perrois chose to include it in his “Kota” book as part of the “Visions of Africa” series. Similar Sango reliquaries can be found in the Musée Barbier-Mueller, Genève, Switzerland (inv. BMG 1019-65 - collected in 1924 and also once in the Morigi collection), Musée du quai Branly (inv. 71.1961.120.24), the Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren, Belgium (EO.1979.1.127), in the ethnographic collection of the Science Museum in London (Wellcome Collection), and in a private collection (Sotheby’s, Paris, 18 June 2014, lot 72).