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Large mask representing Dzunukwa with big open mouth and round hollow eyes - Donald Ellis Gallery
Wooden mask representing Dzunukwa, the mythological basket ogress - Donald Ellis Gallery

Dzunukwa Mask

Kwakwaka’wakw
Northern Vancouver Island, BC

ca. 1840-60

wood, paint, bear hide, cotton thread

height: 12 ¾"

Inventory # CN4307

Sold

acquired by The Audain Art Museum, Whistler, BC


PROVENANCE

Charles Ratton, Paris, France
Adolf Hoffmeister, Prague, Czech Republic
Sotheby's, New York, November 30, 1999, lot 260
Ziff Family Collection, New York, NY

EXHIBITED

Ralph C. Altman Memorial Exhibition, The Fowler Museum, UCLA, Los Angeles, 1968
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Temporary Loan, Cat. No. L.2015.31.5, May 2015 - September 2016

PUBLISHED

Andre Breton and Paul Eluard, ‘La Nuit Est Une Dimension’, in: Cahier d'Art, Paris "La Nuit Est Une Dimension", 1935, pg. 102
Forman, The Art of Four Continents, Prague, 1956
Forman, Exotic Art, London, 1956, pgs. 172 and 182

RELATED EXAMPLES

National Museum of Canada, Cat. No. VII-E-579 - See: Harner, Michael J. and Elsasser, Albert B. Art of the Northwest Coast. Berkeley: Robert H. Lowie Museum of Anthropology, 1965, pg. 83, for a mask collected at Alert Bay in 1922

Milwaukee Public Museum, Cat. No. 17359 - See: Macnair, Peter, Joseph, Robert and Grenville, Bruce. Down From the Shimmering Sky: Masks of the Northwest Coast. Vancouver: Douglas & MacIntyre, 1998, pg. 149, pl. 123

Museum of Anthropology, University of British Columbia, Cat. No. A6374 and A4034 - See: Hawthorn, Audrey. Art of The Kwakiutl Indians and Other Northwest Coast Tribes. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1967, pg. 155, fig.147