African
tribes in African art.
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Fon iron image of Gun, the
god of iron and war Dahomey Museum
A fine 2000 years old Nok from
Nigeria.(c)collection David Norden.
Height 45cm
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A complete African tribes art list, african sculptures and masks description can be found on this website, just browse around.
The visual, performing, and literary arts of native Africa, particularly of sub-Saharan, or black Africa, are a very interesting world to discover. The arts include the
media of sculpture, painting, textiles, costume, jewelry, architecture, music, dance, drama, and poetry. But, this website concentrate only on the sculptural arts of Africa.
Many illustrations are from items that I sold or are still available.
African arts
West Africa Scholars divide the visual arts of
West Africa into
three broad areas: the western Sudan, the Guinea Coast, and Nigeria. This is done partly to enable the outsider to comprehend the diversity of styles and traditions within the
region, while recognizing that there are themes common to all of the areas.
Central Africa arts are among the most
sought after African arts, since many Western countries did have a
colonial past.
South
Africa, they have some very refined art, but
it isn't easy to find.
read also The Ndebele people of Zimbabwe
East Africa is geographically complex, ranging from the mountains of central Ethiopia to coastal plains and offshore islands. Farther inland are the great lakes of Africa, forests, and the Rift Valley, the cradle of humankind. Tools and fossil remains of the earliest humans have been found in an area that extends from the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania and northward into Ethiopia.
Madagascar
Art
is in between African and Indonesian art.
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 Central Africa
tribes
Gabon Punu Kota
Fang
Zaire
Kongo-Yombe-Bembe
Teke
Lualaba River area Mangbetu Mbole
Lega
Bembe Luba Hemba Tabwa Songye
Kuba Pende
Yaka Tchokwe & Lunda
West Africa
Western-Soudan
Dogon-Tellem Bambara
Djenne-Mopti, Dogon, Lobi Mossi Senufo
 Bambara dance wood
headdress
in the form of an antelope
This is the forested region of West Africa,
where Islam was not a dominant influence until recent years. Political
organizations in the past tended to be small in scale, with government
sometimes in the hands of chiefs, sometimes by assemblies of men,
sometimes by secret associations manifesting their attributes in
masquerade ceremonies. State systems developed toward the eastern end of
the region, particularly in areas inhabited by the Ashanti (in
present-day Ghana) and Fon (Benin) and in the Yoruba Oyo empire and the
Edo kingdom of Benin (Nigeria).
Bidyogo Baga Mende Sapi-Grebo-Bassa
Dan
Ngere
Bete
Ashanti
Asante Baule
Guro-Yaure
Lagoon Regions: Ebrie Attye
Fon Moba-Togo
Guinea Coast sculpture displays a greater tendency to naturalistic styles of representation. Some of the best-known traditions of the area are the following.
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The northern and southern parts of Nigeria can be
considered part of the western Sudan and Guinea Coast, respectively; but,
because of the wealth of evidence for an artistic tradition of some 2,000 years,
it is convenient to consider Nigeria separately.
 Northern Nigeria
Igala
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Other groups in northern Nigeria
Bura
In contrast to the more representational
style of terra cotta sculptures created by their neighbors, Bura
heads terra cottas are distinguished by a preference for abstraction and
simplification.
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Some amazon books you
could buy:
Bronzes from Ife and Benin Exhibition
from February 3 to April 14, 2007
Igbo
On both sides of the Niger, but mainly to the east,
live the Igbo. Traditionally, they have lived in small and often isolated
settlements scattered through the forest. Only on the northern and western edges
of the area, under influence from Igala and Benin, are hereditary rulers found.
In Igbo society there is strong social pressure toward individual distinction,
and men can move upward through successive grades by demonstrating their
achievements and their generosity. One of the traditional representations of
this was the ikenga, that part of oneself enabling personal achievement,
with cult figures representing the attributes of distinction.
The lack of overall centralization among the
Igbo-speaking peoples has been conducive to the development of a great variety
of art styles and cultural practices. The earliest sculpture known from Igboland
is from the village of Igbo-Ukwu, where the grave of a man of distinction and a
ritual store, dating from the 9th century AD, contained both chased copper
objects and elaborate castings of leaded bronze. The earliest artistic castings
from black Africa, these pieces consist of ritual vessels and other ceremonial
objects with intricate surface decoration, often small animals and insects
represented in the round.
A very great variety of masks is found among the Igbo.
The masks, of wood or fabric, are employed in a variety of dramas: social
satires, sacred rituals (for ancestors and invocation of the gods), initiation,
second burials, and public festivals, which now include Christmas and
Independence Day. Some masks appear at only one festival, but the majority
appear at many or all. Best known are those of the Northern Igbo Mmo society,
which represents the spirits of deceased maidens and their mothers with masks
symbolizing beauty. Among the Southern Igbo, the Ekpe society, introduced from
the Cross River area, uses contrasting masks to represent the maiden spirit and
the elephant spirit, the latter representing ugliness and aggression and the
former representing beauty and peacefulness. A similar contrast is found in
their Okorosia masks, which correspond to the Mmo of the Northern Igbo. The
Eastern Igbo are best known for masquerades associated with the Iko okochi
harvest festival, in which the forms of the masks are determined by tradition,
though the content of the play varies from year to year. Stock characters
include Mbeke, the European; Mkpi, the he-goat; and Mba, which appear in pairs,
one representing a boy dressed as a girl mimicking
the behaviour of a girl, the other representing the girl being satirized.
Most impressive are the ijele masks of
the Northern Igbo, which are 12 feet (366 centimetres) high. Consisting of
platforms six feet in diameter, supporting tiers of figures made of
coloured cloth and representing everyday scenes, they honour the dead to ensure
the continuity and well-being of the community.
Wooden figures are carved for ancestors of both sexes,
varying from less than one to more than five feet in height. Those representing
founders of the village are kept in a central shrine and sometimes become
patrons of the market. A great many other decorative wooden objects are made,
including musical instruments, doors, stools, mirror frames, trays for offering
kola nuts to guests, dolls, and a variety of small figures used in divination.
Shrines called mbari, which contain elaborate
tableaux of painted, unfired earth, are made in honour of the earth spirit in
villages near Owerri in southern Nigeria; and in Igbo communities to the west of
the Niger, elaborate pottery groups representing a man and his family are made
for the yam cult. There seems to be no tradition of pottery sculpture in other
Igbo groups.
Ibibio
Among the oldest sculptures of tropical Africa are several hundred ancestor figures, called ekpu, of the Ibibio coastal
trade centre of Oron, some of which are thought to date from the late 18th
century. They are bearded figures, three to four feet high, and are so
individual as to suggest portraiture, despite their schematic style. Oron is one
group of Ibibio-speaking villages. As with the Igbo, Ibibio is not a single
group but several networks of independent communities, with local unity
represented by secret associations and their masquerades. The Ekpo society uses
black masks, often of naturalistic appearance and with movable jaws, to maintain
social order and propitiate the ancestors; some of these masks represent disease
and deformity.
Ekoi
The Ekoi-speaking peoples (Anyang, Boki, Ejagham,
Keaka, and Yako) are best known for their large, skin-covered masks, which have
two or even three faces, and for their smaller headpieces, which represent a
head or an entire figure. The headpieces and masks have metal teeth, inlaid
eyes, and frequently pegs to represent hair, which, alternatively, may be carved
in elaborate coils. They are used by several masking associations. In the
northern Ekoi area, around Ikom, are found circles of large stones, akwanshi,
from one to six feet high, carved in low relief to represent human figures. They
are thought to be no earlier than the 16th century.
Fulani
The Fulani are in origin nomadic pastoralists who range
from Senegal to the Cameroon grasslands. They are particularly known for their
body decoration and for their engraved milk gourds. In addition, in Mali they
have settled groups of artists such as goldsmiths, leatherworkers, blacksmiths,
weavers, and potters.
Hausa
Northern Nigeria has long been dominated by the Muslim
Hausa who, since the 19th century, have been ruled by Fulani amirs
(emirs). For centuries their buildings have been decorated inside with molded
and painted low-relief decorations, which have more recently been applied to the
exteriors. Both decorative and of a high technical standard are their crafts:
leatherwork for saddles, bags, hilts, and sheaths; gold and silver jewelry;
ironwork; pottery; weaving and embroidery.
Nupe
The Nupe have been Muslim for some centuries and are
best known for their weaving, embroidery, beadmaking, wood carving, and sheet
metalwork. They have produced many doors carved in low relief in a blend of
decorative designs. Carved and painted masks are made for the elo, a
purely secular performance intended only to entertain (nowadays on the Prophet's
birthday). The elo mask has a human face with a motif (sometimes a human
figure) rising above it, flanked with stylized horns. The gugu
masquerader wears a cloth mask decorated with cowrie shells, but sometimes
Yoruba masks are used. The ndako gboya appears to be indigenous; a spirit
that affords protection from witches, it is controlled by a small secret society
that cleanses communities by invitation. The mask consists of a tall tube of
white cotton supported inside on a bamboo pole about 12 feet long.
That Nupe art should have been influenced by the Yoruba
is not surprising. Yoruba live among the Nupe, and there are bronzes in the Nupe
villages of Tada and Jebba--one of them apparently an Ife work, and another in a
more recent Yoruba style. Others of this group, which include the largest
castings ever made in black Africa, share features with Benin sculpture and have
other elements that are widely distributed in time and space on the Lower Niger.
Nupe tradition says these sculptures were taken from Idah, the Igala capital, in
the early 16th century. Many were probably already ancient, but nothing is known
of ancient Igala bronze casting.
Other
groups in northern Nigeria
There is a great diversity of sculptural tradition
among peoples inhabiting the Niger and Benue valleys, the mountainous
regions around the Jos Plateau in the centre of the area, and Adamawa to the
east. This is altogether an area of astonishing diversity little understood
beyond a confusing list of "tribal" names. Some of the better known
traditions include the Igala, Idoma, Afo, Tiv, and Jukun, all of the Benue
Valley
Jen-bata Reliquary
Fragment
17th / 18th century
Jen - Nigeria
Height: 20cm
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This
piece is a Jen or Bata soul vessel. Since ancient times, a number of
different ethnic groups in northeastern Nigeria bury their dead twice.
In the period between the two burials (several months to one year) a
soul vessel is produced to lock up the dead person’s soul so that it
can not wander and cause harm. Von Uechtritz and Passarge brought the
first vessels and fragments of this type to Europe in 1894. These soul
vessels "kusson" had simple pot shaped bodies with hollow
tubular arms and a rather baroque or mannerist head. Their provenance
was given as "Jen", a small group of around 20,000 people.
They are a sub-group of the Bata-Bachama living North of the upper Banue. This piece was excavated in the 1970s. It is centuries old. Jen
pieces are rare. Some black incrustations at top are sign of its
reliquary use. 20cm. |
This tribe page was made with the help from Britannica
(not free anymore), and with the book from J-P
Bacquart
, some maps are from the Guggenheim, and some explanations from http://www.uiowa.edu/~africart/toc/people.html ,
People from Central Africa with objects from the Tervueren Museum in Brussels . Ritual Messengers: African Treasures from the Tervuren Museum, Belgium Features remarkable pieces -- masks, ancestral statues, ritual figurines and many others -- from the world's richest collections of Central African art and culture.
Religion and productions of the Lobi
west Africa slave trade. A tragic reminder of the slave trade Tragic
reminder of slave trade The Senegalese seem to really like
Americans, which may seem odd these days, as ninety percent of them are
Moslems.
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ANTWERPEN-Belgium
Tel +32 3 227 35 40
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