The Africanization of the European Art: A Short History and Its Contemporary Evolution (19^th-21^st Centuries)

Abstract

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 19 th and the beginning of the 20 th 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 20 th and 21 st 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 .