African art played a
fundamental role in the development of European and international contemporary
art. Nevertheless, its function is still scarcely acknowledged by critics, even if it has been crucial
especially between the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. In this period, African art exerted an important influence on artists
as Matisse, Modigliani, Brancusi as well as on Picasso and Braque, the fathers
of Cubism. These artists, gathered under the “Parisian School”, drew largely
from the African masks and sculptures, reshaping their style in original and
revolutionary works. The research here
presented aims at analyzing the history of this
artistic influence, rebuilding the aesthetic, cultural and political
environment of France in that period. Where this influence did
not occur, as in Italy, due to the close relation between colonial experience
and the advent of fascism, every form of metissage was hindered, and art was aligned with the regime’s
aesthetics. The later artistic tendencies of the 20th and 21st centuries show that the influence of African art, transmitted through Cubism
and other artistic avant-garde, became an international
mark. Concurrently,, African artists created
autonomous movements, in a path of interconnected autonomy in relation to
Western art.
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