1980s
- Cheri Samba: Congolese artist known for flour sack paintings and popular art pieces
- Marlene Dumas: South African born photographer, moves to Netherlands in 1975 but still focuses on South African issues
- Kevin Brand: installation artist
- William Rubin: curator of Primitivism in 20th Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern at MoMA
- Mofokeng: South Africa apartheid documentary photographer
- Jean Hubert Martin: curator of Magiciens de la Terre (an 1989 exhibit that acted as a response to the Primitivism exhibition)
- Mor Faye: known as an "African Van Gogh" for his mentally unstable and bright aesthetic towards abstraction
- Ibrahim El Salahi: used calligraphy for its expressionistic quality
- El Hadji Sy: Senegalese artist and activist, active in the Village de Artes until 1983
- Jackson Hlungwani: self-taught artist, ordained in the African Zionist church buts tarts his own church (New Jerusalem) in South Africa; used his art to decorate his church
- Iba N'Diaye: first head of Ecole de Dakar, father of Modern Senegalese art
- Ouattara Watts: neo-expressionist artist from Cote d'Ivoire
- Rotimi Fani-Kayode: Young British Artists (YBA) affiliated-photographer; known for exploring issues of sexuality
- Sokari Douglas Camp: Nigerian female artist working in metal sculpture
- Transitional art: emerged in the 1980s in South Africa