102. IATMUL GABLE MASK, PAPUA NEW GUINEA wood, pigments 74 cm. high Provenance Charles Ratton, Paris, circa 1935 Josef Mueller, Solothurn Galerie Kornfeld, Berne, Art d'Afrique, Art d'Océanie et d'Amérique de la collection Josef Müller Soleure, 23 June 1979, lot 256 Peter Kohler, Ancona Loed and Mia Van Bussel, Amsterdam, 2009 Literature Conru, K., Sepik Ramu Art, Brussels, 2019, p.108 Exhibited Brussels, Lempertz, Sepik Ramu Art, May-June 2019 Positioned high on the façade just below the spire, Iatmul gable masks express the belief that each house is a living being. Carved from wood and painted or woven from rattan, they are distinguished by concentric eyes and a dramatically elongated nose rising above an open mouth. Early 20th-century photographs indicate that men's houses were more frequently adorned with large rattan examples (cf. Peltier, P. et al., Sepik – Art de Papouasie-Nouvelle-Guinée, Paris, 2015, p.158). Wooden masks, such as the present lot, were created to ward off evil and intimidate enemies. As noted by Christin Kocher Schmid, "the gable masks of the dwellings embodied female, clan-specific spirit beings, who were supposed to protect the inhabitants of the house from disaster" (Greub, S. (ed.), Authority and Ornament, 1985, p.184).