Bronze art and ancestor worship in African art
The bronze castings from Benin from the Portuguese colonial times are the focus of this collection, together with the so-called “commemorative heads”. The terracotta heads from the 12th - 15th century were used in the African Kingdom of Benin, on the territory of today's Nigeria, for ancestor worship. They were found in 1910 by the German archaeologist and adventurer Leo Frobenius in the north of the holy city of Yoruba Ile-Ife.
