Contemporary African Artists: Blending Tradition & Modernity

This article by Anton Mentrup explores how contemporary African artists are reimagining ancient traditions for a global audience.

Africa is a huge continent with many different peoples, groups, cultures and tradition. This diversity is seen even in the artistry that it presents to the world in the old african tribal art. Modern African art has a very strong, storied and personal history. Their beautiful and coveted African masks were created to honor their ancestors, to ensure a healthy and plentiful crop, to celebrate, to mourn, to be used in initiation rituals. There work was deliberately and purposefully created to meet the spiritual needs of the tribe. They were infused with spirituality and served a functional purpose. These African masks were used primarily to communicate, seek advice and please the ancestors. The spirits and ancestors were even believed to have inhabited the African masks after special and specific rituals were performed.

African Figures and fetishes, another popular artistry of this continent, were also strongly connected with the supernatural, and were again created to commune with the supernatural world. The artists of Africa, especially beginning in the early 20th century, greatly inspired the art of the West, energizing great artists such as Pablo Picasso, Vincent Van Gogh and Modigliani. Their organized forms, spirituality, abstraction and imagination, helped to free Western artists from their restraint.

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Today, the torch has been passed to a generation of African contemporary artists, artists such as Efiaimbelo, Fanizani Akuda, Frederic Bruly Bouabre Prince Twins Seven-Seven, and Reinata Sadimba. These artists have

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