ROMANTIC VIEW OF AFRICA FROM FRENCH ARTISTS AT BONHAMS

LAST CHANCE TO SEE ROMANTIC FRENCH VIEWS OF AFRICA FROM THE EARLY 20TH CENTURY AT BONHAMS 

Sponsored by The Africa Channel and Action Aid.

Beguiling images of Africa, painted by young, adventurous and itinerant artists in the 20th century, are on show at Bonhams until 11th January, in an exhibition entitled ‘The Africanists’, sponsored by award-winning The Africa Channel and Action Aid.

Starting in the 1880s and continuing to the 1960s, artists well-established in their careers in Europe and abroad set off to explore Africa. They were encouraged by the French and Belgian Governments, who used the art to open a window on life in Africa to attract future colonists. Although The Africanists travelled to Africa during years in which some of the worst colonial exploitation was taking place, their works reflect a continent of great natural beauty, humanity, diversity and tradition – a vibrant continent that is still very much alive amidst everything else

The artists included in the exhibition translated the colours, sounds, scents, and spectacle of Africa onto canvas. Their travel methods varied: some were content with a single tour, while others committed their lives to the place, living, working and dying there. 

As Lynne Thornton, Author of Les Africanistes, Peintres Voyageurs (AC R edition 1990) says: “Each of the Africanists, whether in an academic, semi-figurative or more abstract style, endeavoured to give their own vision of the continent and to relate their own unforgettable experience. These men and women who, for the most part, travelled or lived in Africa in the 1920s to the 1950s, were devoid of racial prejudice. Their aim was not to impress or impose, nor was it to record the establishment of Europeans. For these artists, Africa was black, not white.”

The field of Africanist art remains relatively unfamiliar to English-speaking audiences, but it marks the origins of an artistic curiosity for the continent that continues to this day.  In contemporary France and Belgium, the genre is well represented in national museums such as the Musée de Quai Branley and the Musée Royal de l’Afrique Centrale, but has yet to truly penetrate UK or US public collections.