The art of African people is extraordinarily vigorous and brilliant in its sense of form and intense emotional life. Its impact upon the development of the modern art started from Picasso, Derain, Braque, and Modigliani and continues to this day.  In contrast to Western art, African art is almost never meant to beautify and decorate.  It is intended for tribal worship, rituals, magic and communication with the supernatural. Nevertheless,  forces unleashed by these societal needs created artworks of great artistic skill, stylistic diversity and expressive qualities. These artworks entice and dazzle with profoundly subconcious appeal rather than with logic and reason.  African Art is still undervalued by general public, museums and collectors. In contrast to Western and Asian art, it does not yet command the exuberant prices at galleries and auctions.  Even most famous artists rarely signed their creations relegating them to the fringe of the celebrity oriented art commerce establishment. Thus, the only way to value African art is by its most intrinsic and timeless attributes - aesthetics, beauty and profound spirituality. It is very unfortunate that the recent resurgence of interest in African art coincides with its rapid disappearing under pressures from   globalization, urbanization and civil strive.

Items in our museum are primarily wooden objects and bronzes. We carefully selected them to reveal the astonishing variety and expressive power of the art of the continent that contains more distinct people and cultures than any other. We attempted to authenticate every object using our expertise, documentation and our extensive multililingual reference library. This is a complex  task, since African art is rarely signed or dated. Its movement and ownership is rarely documented. As in any museum, attributation is an ongoing process prone to some errors. This museum was created with the help of many excellent publications on African art. Please enjoy this museum and let us know your feedback. For questions, comments or information, please email vera@arttribal.com . We change and expand our collection all the time so please come back again!