A selection of work by Spanish master Pablo Picasso will make a rare appearance in Africa — the continent that inspired his revolutionary paintings but which he never visited.
“Picasso and Africa” will run in two South African galleries between February and May. It is the largest exhibition of its kind and one of few to be hosted on the continent, organizers say.
More than 60 Picassos from the Musee National Picasso in Paris and his family collection will be displayed alongside the traditional West African artifacts from which he drew so heavily for his groundbreaking work.
African inspiration
“This is not a Picasso mini retrospective. We decided to explore new possibilities and for the first time to focus on the relationship between Africa and Picasso,” said Marilyn Martin, director of art collections at Cape Town’s Iziko Museums.
Martin said the bold lines and angular shapes of African art pervaded Picasso’s work, from his drawings, sculptures and paintings to costumes he designed for the Russian Ballet.
“Sixty-one paintings, drawings and sculptures from 1906 to 1972 reveal those moments when Picasso succumbed to the spell of the African continent,” she told Reuters.
Among them are sketches on which the seminal “Les Desmoiselles d’Avignon” was based. The visually jarring image of five prostitutes in a brothel established Picasso as one of the giants of modern art.
Other works include a series of 11 lithographs tracking the development of the modernism Picasso helped spearhead, along with peers like French painter Henri Matisse with his trademark reclining nudes and still lifes.
The day cubism was born
Picasso’s extraordinary talent was evident at an early age. At 8-years-old, he produced his first oil painting.
But it was his contact with African art in early 1900s Paris that would change the course of modern art.
During one of many frequent visits to the Paris home of American expatriate writer Gertrude Stein, Matisse presented him with an African figurine he had bought at an antique store.
Poet Max Jacob witnessed the impact the figurine had on the young Picasso.
“Picasso held it in his hands for the rest of the evening. The following morning when I arrived at the studio, the floor was covered with sheets of Ingres drawing paper,” Jacob said, according to Web site www.africans-art.com.
“On each sheet was a sketch, almost identical: the face of a woman with a single eye, a nose too long converging with the mouth, a length of hair on the shoulder. Cubism was born that day.”
