‘The violence of racist tyranny’: African Guernica goes on display alongside Picasso masterpiece
Why it matters: This exhibition redefines art history, challenging Western biases and celebrating African influence on global masterpieces.
- Dumile Feni's 'African Guernica' is a disturbing charcoal and pencil drawing from 1967, reflecting the artist's rage against apartheid, now on display at the Reina Sofía.
- Manuel Segade, director of the Reina Sofía, launched a new annual exhibition series, 'History Doesn’t Repeat Itself, But It Does Rhyme,' to re-read famous works and correct historical biases by integrating art from diverse cultural and geographical frameworks.
- Tamar Garb, exhibition curator and professor at University College London, emphasizes that Picasso's 'Guernica' itself was profoundly influenced by African sculpture, underscoring a circularity in artistic influence that the exhibition now makes explicit.
- The exhibition challenges the historical relegation of African art to 'handicrafts or to savagery' by Western art history, as noted by Segade.
Dumile Feni's 'African Guernica,' a powerful charcoal drawing depicting the violence of apartheid, is now displayed opposite Picasso's masterpiece at the Reina Sofía, marking its first exhibition outside South Africa. This groundbreaking move by the museum aims to correct historical biases in art by placing African art on equal footing with Western works, highlighting the shared themes of human suffering and the often-overlooked influence of African art on European modernism.
