African influence on modern art

African sculptures had very strong influence on European art during 19th and 20th century. They inspired many artists because of their abstract form of the human body. French and Spanish painters Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso as well as other artists from School of Paris (perhaps also influenced by Paul Gauguin and Paul Cezanne) adopted African sculptures style mixed with Cubist style in their paintings.

Although Picasso's paintings from his 'African Period' have really vivid colour palette and the faces became flat, he kept the Cubist style by fragmented shapes in his paintings. What I find interesting in his paintings from that period are the colours he had chosen and relationships between them. However, I do not like the flattened faces and shapes Picasso created as I am not fond of abstract art.

The Young Sailor, 1906 (above) by Henri Matisse is one of his paintings influenced by African art. I find this painting quite nice because of the texture of the clothes that the artist created - in some way it looks abstract and loose, but at the same time it is quite realistic. And again, I like the nice colours that Matisse used and I think they really look fantastic together.

I think that the African influence played a big role in the modern art. It also inspired later generations of artists - Jean Michel was one of them. He incorporated African art with graffiti art. In my opinion it is interesting approach and I think he did similar thing to what Cubists did, mixing two different styles of art to create something new.