Lilanga, George (1934–2005)
George Lilanga was a contemporary Tanzanian artist best known for his colorful paintings and sculptures of mashetani, or devils in Kiswahili, and transforming a Makonde…
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Beier, Georgina (1938--)
Georgina Beier, née Betts, was born in London in 1938. At age sixteen she enrolled in the Kingston Art School; however, she dropped out after…
Butler, Frederick Guy (1918–2001)
Guy Butler, poet, playwright, director, historian, autobiographer, essayist, academic and public intellectual, was born and raised in the Eastern Cape in South Africa. He began…
Bruce Onobrakpeya (1932--)
Printmaker, sculptor, painter and inventor of new techniques, Bruce Onobrakpeya was one of the major figures to emerge from the Zaria Arts Society in Nigeria…
Nnaggenda, Francis (1936--)
From an early age, Francis Nnaggenda knew he wanted to be an artist. Born in 1936, Nnaggenda was raised in rural Uganda where he became…
Mede, Cuthy (1949--)
Born in Zimbabwe in 1949 to Malawian parents, Cuthbert (Cuthy) Mede grew up on Likoma Island, Lake Malawi. Internationally, Mede is considered the most well…
Enwonwu, Ben C. (1917–1994)
Benedict Chukwukadibia Enwonwu was a pioneer African modernist and the first African transnational artist to gain global visibility, having had his art exhibited in Europe,…
Casablanca School
The École des Beaux-Arts of Casablanca was founded in 1950 by the French, during the protectorate era in Morocco (1912–1956). It has stayed open constantly…
Osun Osogbo Sacred Grove
The Osun Osogbo Sacred Grove is part of the story of Nigerian Modernism. Situated on the outskirts of the city of Osogbo in Southwest Nigeria,…
Okundaye, Nike (1951--)
Chief (Mrs.) Oyenike Monica Okundaye, better known as Nike, is a painter and textile artist who has had a profound impact on the preservation and…
Groupe Bogolan Kasobané
The Groupe Bogolan Kasobané is an association of six artists from Mali, West Africa: Kandioura Coulibaly, Klètigui Dembélé, Boubacar Doumbia, Souleymane Goro, Baba Fallo Keita,…
African Hip-Hop
There are several features that distinguish African Hip-Hop music from the genre’s American origins. Principal targets of its social critique such as disenfranchisement and social…
Afrocubanismo in Music
Afrocubanismo was an esthetic trend in art music during the first half of the twentieth century focusing on African cultural features in Cuban society. The…
Afrocubanismo
Afrocubanismo constitutes an ideological shift in the valuation of Afro-Cuban forms of cultural expression and their acceptance on a national scale. From about 1927 through…
Millin, Sarah Gertrude (1888–1968)
Born of Lithuanian Jewish parentage, author Sarah Gertrude Millin grew up amongst the diamond diggings in the Northern Cape province of South Africa. Beginning with…
Brutus, Dennis (1924–2009)
Dennis Brutus was an author born in Salisbury, Rhodesia (now Harare, Zimbabwe). He was raised in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. He was classified as a…
Glasser, Sylvia (1940–)
Over the course of a career that stretches across from the regime of apartheid through the transition and into the establishment of a democratic republic,…
Campbell, Roy (1901–1957)
Schooled in South Africa, in 1919 Campbell went to Oxford, but never entered the university. After marriage to Mary Garman in 1922, and the success…
Opperman, Diederik Johannes (1914–1985)
Dirk Opperman is known as a poet whose poetry is deeply concerned with Africa as a physical and symbolic space. As a dominant poetic figure…
Plaatje, Solomon Tshekisho (1876–1932)
Born in 1876 in the rural Free State, Sol Plaatje is descended from the Barolong boo-Modiboa, royals who had been deposed in the 1500s. The…
Tshelantende
Tshelantende was an artist, tailor, and hunter born before the turn of the twentieth century in Luluaburg, today’s Kananga, and lived until 1950s in Ibanshe…
Bouabré, Frédéric Bruly (1923–2014)
Frédéric Bruly Bouabré is one of the best-known contemporary African artists. His drawings first gained international exposure in 1989 when exhibited in the groundbreaking show…
Livingstone, Douglas James (1932–1996)
Douglas Livingstone is regularly cited as South Africa’s pre-eminent poet of the twentieth century. Born in Malaysia, but settling in South Africa at the age…
La Création du Monde
A ballet inspired by a creation fable in Blaise Cendrars’s Anthologie nègre (1921), La Création du monde (The Creation of the World) was produced by…
Fugard, Athol (1932--)
Athol Fugard has been a novelist and memoirist (of sorts), but is best known for his pioneering political work in the theatre as a writer,…