AFRICAN ART

In the early 1900s, the qualities of traditional African sculpture became a very big influence among many European artists who formed an avant-garde in the development of modern art. Over in France, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, and some of their friends combined the highly stylized treatment of the human figure in African sculptures with painting styles derived from the post-Impressionist works of Cezanne and Gauguin. The resulting vivid colour palette, picotrial flatness, and fragmented cubist shapes had helped to define early modernism. While these many artists knew nothing of the original meaning and function of the West Central African scupltures they encountered, they immediately recognized the spiritual aspect of the composition and used these qualitites to their own works to move beyond the naturalism that had defined Western art since the Renaissance.

Pablo Picasso, Bust of a Man, 1908.

African Mask.

Pablo Picasso, Demoiselles d'Avignon, 1907.

References:

African Influences in Modern Art | Thematic Essay | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History | The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 2013. African Influences in Modern Art | Thematic Essay | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History | The Metropolitan Museum of Art. [ONLINE] Available at:http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/aima/hd_aima.htm. [Accessed 15 May 2013].

Dissociation (Coulter-Smith 2006: ch. 5, p. 2). 2013. Dissociation (Coulter-Smith 2006: ch. 5, p. 2). [ONLINE] Available at:http://www.installationart.net/Chapter5Dissociation/dissociation02.html. [Accessed 15 May 2013].