When artists and collectors in the West first took an interest in African Art, they did not appreciate its social or spiritual function. African art was simply viewed as a naive genre with a strong visual impact.

At the dawn of the 20th century, European artists were looking for new forms of expression that challenged, rather than simply illustrated, their rapidly changing world of ideas and technology. The traditional techniques of realism and perspective seemed overworked and predictable. Their solution was to draw on images from other cultures and fuse them with European influences to refresh the tired traditions of Western Art.