Idea behind the art
'Picasso and Africa', an exhibition that puts works by Pablo Picasso alongside the African sculpture that inspired him, opens this week in Johannesburg.
"It never makes sense just to hang pictures unless there's an idea behind it," explains Marilyn Martin, director of the SA National Gallery. "It was self evident the theme had to be Picasso in Africa because that hadn't been done before." Picasso's 1908 Sitting Nude is seen with a mask from Baule in Ivory Coast.
Validation
Woman with Joined Hands, is a sketch made for Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, which he was working on at the time when he first saw African sculpture, at the Museum of Mankind in Paris in 1907. The African works come from collections in South Africa but are similar to works seen by Picasso. The names of their creators are unknown. "This gives us a way of validating an anonymous artist – we pay tribute through this exhibition to those artists," Marilyn Martin says.
Critical moment
His encounter with African art was a critical moment in Picasso's development as a painter. The Tree dates from just a few months after his first visit to the museum, and the lines of African sculpture can already be seen in the painting. "You can see what Africa did for the European landscape tradition," Marilyn Martin says. "This was pre-cubism – but you can see it is an early cubist painting."
African forms
In Three Figures under a Tree, painted later the same year, the forms of African masks are clear to see. Marilyn Martin points out features like the elongated noses and concave faces. "You can see how the fragmentation typical of Picasso's depiction of the female nude begins," she says.
Vision
The last Picasso exhibition in Africa was in Senegal in 1972. President Leopold Senghor, a friend of Picasso, paid tribute to an artist "who, like the ancient Mediterraneans and black Africans, used analogical images, form-symbols, both to express his inner vision and make it known."
The current exhibition is at Johannesburg's Standard Bank Gallery from 10 February to 19 March, and at Cape Town's National Gallery from 13 April to 21 May.
Mother and children playing, 1951
Accueil 
