An exhibition of more than 60 of Picasso’s paintings, sculptures and drawings — including the seminal cubist work Les Demoiselles d’Avignon — is coming to South Africa.
Marilyn Martin, director of art collections at Cape Town’s Iziko South African National Gallery, said the show would provide “a detailed look at the influence of African art on Picasso’s career and the important role it played in the evolution of European modernism in general”.
The exhibition will run at Johannesburg’s Standard Bank Gallery from February 10 to March 19 next year, and at the Iziko National Gallery from April 13 to May 26. It will feature works taken from Picasso’s private collection and from the Picasso Museum in Paris. Works created by South Africans that Picasso “might have liked” will supplement the exhibition.
Martin said the artist’s own “dispersed and fragmented collection of African art” could not be accommodated, as it would have added enormous expense to the exhibition.
The Picasso Museum’s curator, Laurence Madeline, said the combined monetary value of the works was difficult to assess, as the collection in question had never been intended for sale. However, Madeline pointed out that the artist’s work was among the most expensive in the world. In this context, a figure of “hundreds of millions of rands” is not far-fetched.
Part of the exhibition will be a locally produced book in which South African artists, including poets Wally Serote and Peter Clark, muse on Picasso’s fascination with African art. It will also feature an “anthology” of what Picasso said about African art.
Madeline said the Picasso exhibition, which follows exhibitions by French painter and stained-glass artist Marc Chagall in 2000 and Spanish surrealist painter and sculptor Joan Miró in 2002, would be another step in strengthening cultural ties between France and South Africa.
Sponsored by Standard Bank, the French Embassy and the French Institute, the exhibition will also feature an educational component for tourists and people with special needs.