Matisse often reflected on the forms of primitive African idols, as it often happened for Picasso and their Parisian colleagues who, in the boom of collecting non-European art (exhibited in the shops of rue de Rennes), began to paint choppily and sculpt sharp images, to reach the power of the idol and its extraterrestrial energy. The fascination with the beautiful heads of western Africa and the Ivory Coast, like the Ligbi masks, seems to hover in the background of the faces of Matisse, magnetic like fetishes. The bodies of the posed models have clean lines and movements concentrated in small yet powerful gestures, like in the figures of Mossi of Burkina Faso, noble in simplicity, but regal in the erect posture of the spine that arches lightly in a sign of great elegance and dignity.