African Art

At the Pan-African Congress of 1945, in Manchester, England, the assembled representatives of the colonies sanctioned African anticolonial movements, marking the end of Europe's imperial age. The postwar period was also significant in African art history, for it witnessed an intensified migration of artists to European metropolises.

The independence decade of 1955-65 saw increased interaction among African artists, especially within the continent. Several factors made these contacts possible, but the three most significant were the founding of art schools, which began to turn out more artists; the work of some expatriates; and the political and cultural awareness heightened by the apostles of Pan- Africanism, Pan-Arabism, and Negritude.