event led to the creation of the Contemporary African Art Collection (C.A.A.C) by art collector Jean Pigozzi, who has become one of the major promoters of African art.
Pigozzi’s collection, one of the most important in the world, includes works of artists that live and work in sub-Saharan Africa who use different formats of expression ranging from paintings and sculptures to video and multi-media.
The importance of the collection and of most contemporary African art lies in the fact that artists have liberated themselves from the aesthetic tutelage imposed by western models and are able to express local or universal ideas with their own language, icons and formats.
African artists live and work closely in touch with their public and are aware of both local and global current affairs. Furthermore, the representation of collective problems has become a recurrent pattern which underlines the importance of the community in Africa