Page 49 - Zimbabwe Stone Sculpure 1st Edition

6The influence of African sculpture on world art
Many people are not aware of the role African art played in modern art. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Africa was being colonized by countries in Europe and African masks
and objets d’art were being sent back to their home countries.
However, artists such as Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and Georges Braque, who were the established avant-garde of European artists in the early 20th century, were looking for new ideas and the power and simplicity of African art provided this and gave a new direction to the way art was viewed.
Picasso’s interest in African art began when Matisse showed him an African mask. Later he became inspired by looking at African art in the Trocadero Museum in Paris in 1907. Picasso said: “The masks, they were not sculptures like the others. Not at all. They were magical things...Intercessors...against everything; against unknown, menacing spirits”.
Some people believe this discovery inspired Picasso to produce the painting, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (The Young Ladies of Avignon) in 1907. The painting depicts five nude female prostitutes from a brothel in Barcelona. The women are painted in a very angular style and the two on the right of the painting have faces like African masks; an early indication perhaps of the birth of the Cubist movement. Cubism is the term to describe an artistic revolution that took place in painting and sculpture from 1907 until about 1914. It was a movement that broke the constraints of traditional Western art and had a greater impact than any other in the history of modern art.
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