Masks, Magic & Meaning

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THE COLLECTION

This African mask collection has been carefully selected to represent the finest of the continent’s mask cultures. It attempts to encourage and deepen the viewer’s understanding of masks and their use in African spirituality. Why are they so important? Who carved them? Why are they exaggerated in form? Why did our great European modernists rave about their sublime beauty?

“I have felt my strongest artistic emotions when suddenly confronted with the sublime beauty of sculptures executed by the anonymous artists of Africa. These works of a religious, passionate, and rigorously logical art are the most powerful and most beautiful things the human imagination has ever produced.”

—PABLO PICASSO