ABSTRACT
Vladimir Markov was able to assert in Iskusstvo Negrov that the 'new generation of artists are indebted to Africa due to its helping them escape the European stagnation and impasse. In Iskusstvo Negrov, he stated that he intended to write a second, more fully developed analysis of African art within the study he was preparing of the 'The Principles of Plastic Art'. He believed that African sculpture offered a strong expression of what was a universal principle in art-making, germane also for the study of two-dimensional images. The work of V. I. Matvey is all the more valuable in that he went to an ethnographic museum with the exact aim of extracting monuments of eternal art from its 'ethnographic rubbish'. This means he sought to extract, photograph, study, comprehend and explain the process of creative work of artists who are remote and foreign to us, the work being created not just for its ethnographic value but also for its artistic worth.
