Dogon Bronze Equestrian Figure

Four stick legs, a swan-necked head and a rider stretched thin as a pencil.

This Dogon equestrian figure in bronze is Dogon, from Mali, West Africa, and dates to the early 20th century. The Dogon people live in central Mali, near the Bandiagara escarpment, and are widely known for their sculpture, masks and complex cosmology. Visibly, a tall slender figure rises from the flat back of a minimal animal made of rod-like legs and a curved neck. The surface is a mottled dark green with soft shadows, and the rider's face is barely suggested. It is 2.5 inches wide, 1 deep and 3 high.

Minimalism arrived here centuries before anyone gave it a name.