Region
Art of North Africa
North Africa — Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and, in this guide, Sudan — joins the Mediterranean, the Arab world and the rest of Africa. Its art runs from the rock paintings of the Sahara and the monuments of ancient Egypt and Nubia, through the mosques, tilework and calligraphy of the Islamic centuries and the carpets and silver jewellery of the Amazigh (Berber) peoples, to modern painters such as Mahmoud Saïd, Baya, Farid Belkahia and Ibrahim El-Salahi.
Updated 3 min read
Rock art and the green Sahara
Long before the desert, the Sahara was a land of lakes and grasslands, and its people painted and engraved its rocks. The Tassili n'Ajjer in Algeria and the Tadrart Acacus in Libya hold some of the world's great rock art: wild animals, cattle herders, then horses and camels as the climate dried. See African rock art.
Egypt and Nubia
Ancient Egypt created one of the most influential art traditions in history, from the pyramids and temples to sculpture, wall painting, jewellery and the hieroglyphic script. To the south, in today's Sudan, the Nubian kingdoms of Kerma and Kush built their own temples and pyramids — more pyramids stand in Sudan than in Egypt — and Kushite kings ruled Egypt in the eighth and seventh centuries BCE. The Grand Egyptian Museum at Giza, which fully opened in November 2025, now presents the treasures of Tutankhamun together for the first time.
Islamic art and architecture
From the seventh century, Islam shaped the region's art. Among its landmarks are the Great Mosque of Kairouan in Tunisia, founded in 670; Cairo's mosques and madrasas, including al-Azhar, founded in 970; and the al-Qarawiyyin mosque in Fez, founded in 859 by Fatima al-Fihri. Moroccan builders perfected zellige, mosaics of hand-cut glazed tiles in geometric patterns, together with carved stucco and painted cedar ceilings. Calligraphy, the art of beautiful writing, runs through all of it — and through the modern painters who reinvented it.
Amazigh arts
The Amazigh (Berber) peoples of North Africa have their own visual language: geometric signs woven into carpets and tattooed on skin, the Tifinagh alphabet, and silver jewellery such as the large brooches that fasten women's clothing. Amazigh carpets — from the cream wool and dark lines of Beni Ourain rugs to the bright colours of Azilal — have become famous worldwide. Among the Tuareg of the Sahara, silversmiths make crosses and pendants in distinctive shapes. In the 1960s the artists of the Casablanca School made these signs the basis of a modern art.
Modern art
Egypt led the way. The sculptor Mahmoud Mokhtar's Egypt's Awakening (1928) became a national monument, and the painter Mahmoud Saïd gave Egyptian life a monumental modern form; later, Inji Aflatoun painted women prisoners from her own prison cell, Adam Henein carried the forms of ancient sculpture into modern granite and bronze, and today Ghada Amer and Wael Shawky show worldwide (see Egyptian artists). In Algeria, Baya exhibited in Paris at sixteen, and after independence M'hamed Issiakhem and Mohammed Khadda founded a modern Algerian painting (see Algerian artists). In Morocco, Farid Belkahia and the Casablanca School built an art from carpets, leather and henna; Chaïbia Talal became the country's best-known self-taught painter, Hassan El Glaoui painted its horsemen, and today Mahi Binebine and Yto Barrada show worldwide (see Moroccan artists); the Khouribga-born sculptor Bruno Catalano, raised in Marseille, is known for bronze travellers with missing bodies. In Tunisia, the École de Tunis painted the life of the capital (see Tunisian artists). In Sudan, Ibrahim El-Salahi and the Khartoum School turned Arabic script into a modern visual language (see Sudanese artists).
Music
North Africa's music includes Algerian raï, Moroccan gnawa, the Andalusian classical traditions of the Maghreb and the great Egyptian song of the twentieth century.
Visiting
Museums of modern art in Cairo and Rabat and the archaeological museums of Egypt and Sudan are listed in where to see African art.