Pablo Picasso’s lifelong admiration for artworks from distant civilizations comes to light in a new Paris exhibition featuring such pieces from his own collection as well as his sketches, sculptures and paintings inspired by them.
Titled Picasso Primitif, the exhibition aims to show “a comparative view of the artist’s works with those of non-Western artists” from Africa, Oceania, the Americas and Asia, according to the Quai de Branly museum, juxtaposing such works.
Items on display include Picasso’s “Three figures beneath a tree” oil painting (Winter of 1907-1908), which shows the fragmentation of the figure in his work, which he had already experimented with in his iconic “Les Demoiselle d’Avignon,” and which was inspired in part by non-Western sculptures.
The exhibition was curated by the museum’s director of the Department of Heritage and Collections, Yves Le Fur, who spoke to Reuters TV on Monday (March 27), about the influence of African sculpture on “Three figures beneath a tree.”
“Then here he will go even further, putting the bodies of these three women in different planes. It’s something that he had also learnt and understood notably from certain African sculptures, which are made up of different planes, like that, geometric, very simple,” Le Fur said.
“Picasso Primitif” runs from Tuesday (March 28) until July 23. – REUTERS
