World-first exhibit showcases Picasso’s African influences

JOHANNESBURG – A world-first art exhibition of Pablo Picasso’s works and the “magical” African masks and sculptures that influenced him opens in Johannesburg today.

A collection of 84 original Picasso paintings and sculptures alongside 29 African art objects will be on display at the Standard Bank gallery in downtown Johannesburg for five weeks. “This is a first.Nowhere else in the world has there been an exhibition showing the relation between Picasso’s work and African art,” said curator Marilyn Martin.The display, which brings his work to South Africa for the first time, shows “how Picasso was fascinated by African art”, said Laurence Madeline, a curator at the Picasso Museum in Paris, which has lent most of the artworks in the exhibit.Although he never set a foot on the African continent, Picasso’s work was strongly influenced by its art.”We have a very good selection of works which had never been seen…showing the moment Picasso was so close to African art that he was inventing a new structure.”The painting ‘Demoiselles d’Avignon’, now in a museum in New York, was his first work influenced by African art but it is “too valuable to travel”, said Madeline.The red-brown painting is of five women gazing at the viewer, with two of the faces based on African masks he saw in a museum.”We wanted to create a dialogue between Picasso and African art,” Martin told AFP.The Picasso paintings include ‘Three figures under a tree’ and the colourful ‘Woman in an armchair’ and ‘Reclining Woman’ as well as the sculpture ‘Head of a Woman’ made from iron.”He not only saw pictures of African art in books; he was exposed to African art from many of the former French colonies,” said Martin.”He learnt from Africa how to turn convex into concave, how to turn chubby cheeks into hollow cheeks.”The African works, mostly originating from Ivory Coast, Gabon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Mali and Nigeria, were created by unknown artists.The exhibition also includes a series of photographs of Picasso’s life and quotations from some of his conversations about African art.”The masks were not simply sculptures like any other.Not at all.They were magical objects,” said Picasso in a conversation penned in the book ‘Oeuvres Completes’ in 1996.”They were weapons.To help people stop being ruled by spirits, to free themselves.Tools.If we give a form to these spirits, we become free …”I understood why I became a painter…’Demoiselle d’Avignon’ must have come to me that day,” said Picasso, who was born in 1881 in Spain and died in 1973.He started painting at the age of seven under the influence of his father, an art teacher.Picasso’s works went through several stages.His early Blue Period was triggered by a close friend’s suicide and depicts isolation and urban squalor.That was followed by the Rose Period in 1905, inspired by the colourful performers of a circus in Paris and characterised by the use of rose, yellow ochre and grey in his paintings.Cubism, the experimentation with geometrical form, came after that.In 1915 Picasso started with NeoClassical Line drawings and his often violent depictions of sexuality came in the 1920s.In 1936 his work was affected by the Spanish Civil War which saw his paintings dominated by mythological and Spanish themes but after the end of World War II his work became less political.- Nampa-AFP”This is a first.Nowhere else in the world has there been an exhibition showing the relation between Picasso’s work and African art,” said curator Marilyn Martin.The display, which brings his work to South Africa for the first time, shows “how Picasso was fascinated by African art”, said Laurence Madeline, a curator at the Picasso Museum in Paris, which has lent most of the artworks in the exhibit.Although he never set a foot on the African continent, Picasso’s work was strongly influenced by its art.”We have a very good selection of works which had never been seen…showing the moment Picasso was so close to African art that he was inventing a new structure.”The painting ‘Demoiselles d’Avignon’, now in a museum in New York, was his first work influenced by African art but it is “too valuable to travel”, said Madeline.The red-brown painting is of five women gazing at the viewer, with two of the faces based on African masks he saw in a museum.”We wanted to create a dialogue between Picasso and African art,” Martin told AFP.The Picasso paintings include ‘Three figures under a tree’ and the colourful ‘Woman in an armchair’ and ‘Reclining Woman’ as well as the sculpture ‘Head of a Woman’ made from iron.”He not only saw pictures of African art in books; he was exposed to African art from many of the former French colonies,” said Martin.”He learnt from Africa how to turn convex into concave, how to turn chubby cheeks into hollow cheeks.”The African works, mostly originating from Ivory Coast, Gabon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Mali and Nigeria, were created by unknown artists.The exhibition also includes a series of photographs of Picasso’s life and quotations from some of his conversations about African art.”The masks were not simply sculptures like any other.Not at all.They were magical objects,” said Picasso in a conversation penned in the book ‘Oeuvres Completes’ in 1996.”They were weapons.To help people stop being ruled by spirits, to free themselves.Tools.If we give a form to these spirits, we become free …”I understood why I became a painter…’Demoiselle d’Avignon’ must have come to me that day,” said Picasso, who was born in 1881 in Spain and died in 1973.He started painting at the age of seven under the influence of his father, an art teacher.Picasso’s works went through several stages.His early Blue Period was triggered by a close friend’s suicide and depicts isolation and urban squalor.That was followed by the Rose Period in 1905, inspired by the colourful performers of a circus in Paris and characterised by the use of rose, yellow ochre and grey in his paintings.Cubism, the experimentation with geometrical form, came after that.In 1915 Picasso started with NeoClassical Line drawings and his often violent depictions of sexuality came in the 1920s.In 1936 his work was affected by the Spanish Civil War which saw his paintings dominated by mythological and Spanish themes but after the end of World War II his work became less political.- Nampa-AFP