African sculpture

Most African sculpture from regions south of the Sahara was historically made of wood and other organic materials that have not survived from earlier than a few centuries ago, while older pottery figures are found from a number of areas. Masks have been important elements in the cultural traditions of many peoples, along with human figures, often highly stylized. There is a vast variety of styles, often varying within the same context of origin and depending on the use of the object. Wider regional trends are apparent, and sculpture is most common among "groups of settled cultivators in the areas drained by the Niger and Congo rivers" in West Africa.
Direct images of African deities are relatively infrequent, but masks in particular are or were often made for traditional African religious ceremonies. Since the latter half of the 20th century, there are also several styles of modern African sculpture, while many sculptures are made for tourists. African masks were an influence on European Modernist art, which was inspired by their lack of concern for naturalistic depiction.
In West Africa, the earliest known sculptures are from the Nok culture which thrived between 500 BC and 500 AD in modern Nigeria, with clay figures typically with elongated bodies and angular shapes. Later West African cultures developed bronze casting for reliefs to decorate palaces like the famous Benin Bronzes, and very fine naturalistic royal heads from around the Yoruba town of Ife in terracotta and metal from the 12th to the 14th centuries. Akan goldweights are a form of small metal sculptures produced over the period 1400–1900, some apparently representing proverbs and so with a narrative element rare in African sculpture, and royal regalia included impressive gold sculptured elements.
Many West African figures are used in religious rituals and are often coated with materials placed on them for ceremonial offerings. The Mande-speaking peoples of the same region make pieces of wood with broad, flat surfaces and arms and legs are shaped like cylinders. In Central Africa, however, the main distinguishing characteristics include heart-shaped faces that are curved inward and display patterns of circles and dots.
Sculpture from East Africa has been collected mainly from the Bongo people in southern Sudan, in Ethiopia and Tanzania. The exhibitions Tanzania. Masterworks of African Sculpture (1994) and Shangaa. Art of Tanzania (2013) presented hundreds of masks and other sculptures from ethnic groups in that country. Makonde masks from Mozambique and Tanzania have been used in ritual dance and initiation ceremonies. East African pole sculptures, carved in elongated human shapes and decorated with geometric forms, while the tops may also be carved with figures of animals, represent abstract human figures or other objects. In traditional ways, such poles of the Bongo people were placed next to graves and associated with death and the ancestral world.
The culture known from Great Zimbabwe left more impressive buildings than sculpture, but the eight soapstone Zimbabwe Birds appear to have had a special significance and were mounted on monoliths. Modern Zimbabwean sculptors in soapstone have achieved considerable international success. Southern Africa's oldest known clay figures date from 400 to 600 AD and have cylindrical heads with a mixture of human and animal features.