CategoriesCultural and Religious Styles
Yoruba Art
Art of the Yoruba of Nigeria, Benin and Togo, from the ancient heads of Ife to beaded crowns, ibeji, masquerades and carved palace posts.
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No open-access works for Yoruba Art are in the index yet. They will appear here as more collections are indexed.
About
The Yoruba of south-western Nigeria and neighbouring Benin and Togo have one of Africa's longest documented sculptural histories. At Ife artists between about the 12th and 15th centuries cast heads in copper alloy and modelled others in terracotta with a calm naturalism, some faces covered in fine vertical lines.
Later Yoruba art serves kingship, the orisha deities and the ancestors. Kings wear conical beaded crowns with veils that hide the face. Diviners of Ifa use carved trays bordered with figures and the face of the messenger deity Eshu. Twin figures, ibeji, are carved and cared for when a twin dies. Masquerades range from Gelede headdresses honouring the powers of elderly women to Egungun costumes of layered cloth for the ancestors. Olowe of Ise, who died in 1938, carved palace doors and veranda posts with tall, dynamic figures, and Lamidi Fakeye and the Oshogbo artists later carried Yoruba forms into modern practice.
Related artists
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