How African Art Influenced European Art

ART HISTORY
How African Art Influenced European Art

Picasso and his Cubist paintings

European artists such as Vlaminck, Derain, Picasso, and Modigliani were influenced by African art forms. The recognition of the aesthetic value of African sculpture by the European began in about 1905.
 
And the Interest in the arts of Africa keeps flourishing, and many modern Western artists, such as those mentioned above, have rediscovered the enduring qualities of African art.

 In the latter part of the 20th century, African art has come to be appreciated for its intrinsic aesthetic value as well as continuing to be a source of inspiration for the work of Western artists.

Read below, quotes from Picasso:
"Everybody always talks about the influences that the Negroes had on me. What can I do? We all of us loved fetishes. Van Gogh once said, ‘Japanese art—we all had that in common.’ For us it’s the Negroes.... When I went to the old Trocadero, it was disgusting. The Flea Market. The smell. I was alone. I wanted to get away. But [ didn’t leave. I stayed. I stayed. I understood that it was very important: something was happening to me, right? The masks weren’t just like any other pieces of sculpture. Not at all. They were magic things... 


The Negro pieces were intercessors, mediators.... I always looked at fetishes. I understood; I too am against everything. I too believe that everything is unknown, that everything is an enemy! 

Everything! Not the details—women, children, babies, tobacco, playing—the whole of it! I understood what the Negroes use their sculptures for Why sculpt like that and not some other way? After all, they weren’t Cubists! Since Cubism didn’t exist. 
It was clear that some guys had invented the models, and others had imitated them, right? Isn’t that what we call tradition? 

But all the fetishes were used for the same thing. They were weapons. To help people avoid coming under the influence of spirits again, to help them become independent. Spirits, the unconscious (people still weren’t talking about that very much), emotion—they’re all the same thing. I understood why I was a painter.

 All alone in that awful museum, with masks, dolls made by the redskins, dusty manikins. Les Demoiselles d ‘Avignon must have come to me that very day, but not at all because of the forms; because it was my first exorcism painting—yes absolutely."