An exhibition featuring works by the famous painter Pablo Picasso has been opened at the Museum of Black Civilizations in Dakar, the capital of Senegal. The show, which premiered in the city for the first time in 1972, return to the capital under the name of "Picasso in Dakar 1972-2022.”
The exhibition, organized in collaboration with the Picasso Museum and the Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac Museum in Paris, includes the work of the Spanish artist as well as 15 works of African art he was inspired by.
Some of Picasso's drawings were exhibited for the first time on the African continent in 1972 at the Dakar Dynamics Museum, which was operating at that time upon the request of then-President Leopold Sedar Senghor.
Although he has never visited sub-Saharan Africa during his lifetime, Picasso is one of the most important Western artists that was influenced by the art of the continent and reflected it in his works. It is known that the Spanish painter's interest in African art was shaped during his visit to the Trocadero Ethnographic Museum in Paris in 1907.
The period between the years 1906 and 1909 in Picasso's artistic life is called the "Negro period." His painting "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907)" is among the works in which the influence of African art on Picasso can be seen most concretely.
Previously, a Picasso exhibition was opened in Johannesburg, South Africa in 2006. "Picasso in Dakar 1972-2022" can be visited by enthusiasts until June 30.
