Fang Figure, Gabon

The Fang people of Gabon produced highly refined ancestral reliquary figures known as 'byeri,' which were attached to bark boxes containing the skulls and bones of important ancestors. These sculptures, characterized by their distinctive heart-shaped faces, elongated necks, and harmonious proportions, served as guardians of sacred relics and mediators between the living and the dead. Fang figures profoundly influenced early 20th-century Western modernist artists, including Picasso and Modigliani, who encountered them in Parisian ethnographic collections.