Abstract

This essay explains the founding of AfriCOBRA as a cohesive, collaborative artists’ coalition that worked with an accepted philosophy and aesthetics to create positive images regarding their ethnic group’s social, economic, and political conditions, regardless of the media or techniques they employed. The philosophy of functionalism or humanism and their aesthetics of line, shape, and color are described in detail, along with several manifesto-like statements on their goals and ideas. The concepts of AfriCOBRA’s philosophy and aesthetics are still relevant for its founding members as well as for present artists, and they will probably inspire future generations of artists as well.

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