History of African Art Timeline

West African bronze and brass casting developed highly naturalistic royal heads and other figures, especially around the Bini town of Benin City and in the artistic tradition associated with Ile Ife, from the 12th to the 14th centuries.

Collectively, surviving Benin plaques and related objects form some of the best-known examples of Benin art. Edo artists created these works from the 13th century onward.

Image source: Art of the Kingdom of Benin

The Kuba Kingdom flourished between the 17th and 19th centuries in the region bordered by the Sankuru, Lulua, and Kasai rivers in the southeast of the modern Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Image source: Kuba Kingdom

In the 17th century, the area of present-day Ghana was a center for trade and cultural exchange, creating conditions for artistic and cultural interaction.

Image source: History of Ghana

The political arrangement in the Ghanaian region lasted until the early 18th century, when the leader Osei Tutu initiated extensive expansion that unified smaller states.

The Kingdom of Mapungubwe was a pre-colonial state in Southern Africa from 1075 to 1220. It lay at the confluence of the Shashe and Limpopo rivers, south of Great Zimbabwe.

Image source: Kingdom of Mapungubwe

Akan gold weights were small metal sculptures produced from 1400 to 1900. Some represented proverbs, adding a narrative dimension uncommon in African sculpture, while royal regalia included sculpted gold elements.

Image source: Akan goldweights

The Kingdom of Luba, or Luba Empire, was a pre-colonial Central African state from 1585 to 1889. It arose in the marshy grasslands of the Upemba Depression in what is now southern Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Image source: Luba Empire

During the 15th century, Portugal engaged in trade with the Sapi culture near the Ivory Coast in West Africa, bringing the culture into documented contact with European commerce.

Since the late 19th century, increasing amounts of African art entered Western collections. The finest pieces were often displayed within narratives of European colonial history.

During and after the 19th- and 20th-century colonial period, Western observers frequently characterized African art as primitive, a term carrying negative assumptions about development and poverty.

Since the late 20th century, artists such as Ibrahim El-Salahi and Fathi Hassan have emerged as significant early figures in the development of contemporary Black African art.

In 1897, most Benin plaques and other objects in the collection were taken by a British force during the Benin Expedition, as British control in southern Nigeria was being consolidated.

At the beginning of the 20th century, art historians including Carl Einstein, Michał Sobeski, and Leo Frobenius published influential works that treated African art as an aesthetic object rather than only an ethnographic one.

Artists’ study of and response to African art at the beginning of the 20th century helped stimulate Western interest in abstraction, formal organization, and psychological expression. African forms influenced artists such as Pablo Picasso, Amedeo Modigliani, and Henri Matisse.

In 1968, Edward Said Tingatinga began painting on wooden sheets with enamel colors. This marked the recognized beginning of Tinga Tinga art.

In 1969, Ibrahim El-Salahi created the metal sculpture Grazing at Shendi. Composed of geometric shapes, the work connects to his memory of his homeland.

The Museum of African Art in Belgrade opened in 1977 because of Yugoslavia’s relations with many African countries, strengthened through the Non-Aligned Movement.

The display of African art and artifacts in European museums has long been controversial. France’s 2018 Report on the restitution of African cultural heritage became a key moment and contributed to increased returns of artifacts.

Image source: Report on the restitution of African cultural heritage