The Benin Plaques are a collection of more than a thousand bronze plaques made by the people from the kingdom of Benin, nowadays Nigeria around the XIII century. In 1987 the British took most of them and take them to the British Museum, other pieces were taken to other museums.
The people from the kingdom of Benin is famous for its prolific production of figures and sculptures made out of bronze, iron, wood, ivory and clay.
One of the aspects that draws attention the most is the great detail that the Benin pieces have. It is quite impressive how the people from Benin developed and master the "Lost Wax" process in their time to build their figures.
The relevance of these figures lies in different and many aspects, but what could be pinpointed as the greatest is that they started the admiration of the African Tribal Art. These figures have inspired a lot of contemporary artists, some even as famous as Picasso or Braque, who started the Cubism movement.
One quite significant conclusion that can be drawn is that the pieces got looted from the Benin people by the British after invading the city of Benin, displaying one more time their barbarism when it came to interacting with other cultures at the time of colonialism.
They represent the sixteenth-century trade connections between West Africa and other countries.
