African Art: Visual Encyclopedia of Art

The Visual Encyclopaedia series provide up to 300 beautiful photographic and artwork images, illustrating subjects of perennial cultural interest. Images are accompanied by narrative providing background, brief criticism, and details on relevant museums, brief biographies and time lines

The art of sub-Saharan Africa has a long history, although it is a difficult to reconstruct precosely because many works, being made from wood and earth, have disappeared without trace and archeological excavations, which could enrich our knowledge of the region are still rare.

Nonetheless, what has been preserved - largely works from the past 150 years, although there are some which date back even thousands of years - is already substantial and provides evidence of a great variety of artistic traditions, which can be traced back to broad historic and geographical areas and to ethnic or tribal groups.