This exhibition “Picasso in Dakar 1972-2022” which will end on June 30 is held at the Museum of Black Civilizations inaugurated on December 6, 2018, under the high patronage of the Presidents of the Republic of Senegal and the French Republic. It benefited from the support of the Ministry of Culture and Communication of Senegal, the French Ministry of Culture and teams from the French Embassy and the French Institute in Dakar. Even if Picasso never came to Dakar, nor elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa, this is the second time that he has been exhibited in the Senegalese capital. 40 works of art including 13 masterpieces by the Spanish artist are on display. The Senegalese Minister of Culture and Communication, Abdoulaye Diop, considers him a noble precursor of cultural mixing.
For El Hadji Malick Ndiaye, curator of the Théodore Monod Museum of African Art and one of the curators of this exhibition, “Picasso had to come back in order to strengthen the great heritage which is that of African art of universal dimension and which has a lot influenced the Spanish Grand Master”. As for Cécile Debray, president of the National Picasso Museum – Paris, she judges that this 2022 exhibition is part of “the new approaches to openness and dialogue that must be built around Pablo Picasso”. A study by Picasso from 1907 for the painting “Les demoiselles d’Avignon”, a canvas that was to change the course of the history of 20th century art, neighbors with a Gouro Baoulé mask from the Ivory Coast, for example. The similarities are obvious. “We recognize in the design of the nose and in the oval of the eyes a great proximity”, declares Guillaume de Sardes, another of the curators of the exhibition. They represent the four partner museums, Hélène Joubert, head of the Africa Heritage Unit at the Quai Branly Museum, El Hadji Malick Ndiaye, curator of the Théodore Monod Museum of African Art in Dakar and Ousseynou Wade.
“Picasso in Dakar 1972-2022” is the fruit of the collaboration between the Picasso-Paris National Museum, the Quai Branly Museum and the Théodore Monod Museum of African Art in Dakar. A collaboration that required five years of various research. It brings together some fifteen works by the Spanish painter, an exceptional loan from the Picasso Museum in Paris, with African creations by unknown authors, especially masks and sculptures as well as a xylophone from the Théodore Monod Museum of African Art in Dakar. Its curator El Hadji Malick Ndiaye in front of this xylophone evokes the pride that every African should feel when seeing an anonymous work associated with the name of an artist such as Picasso, “a feeling of pride in what the artists of the continent have given, and the diversity of styles that gave rise to new forms and nourished modern art”.
As for Fodé Camara, Senegalese painter, scenographer of the exhibition, he recalled with emotion the evening of the opening, his visit to the exhibition “Picasso in 1972” at the Dynamic Museum of Dakar, where more than two hundred works by the artist were on display. The cultural policy of President Léopold Sédar Senghor was particularly brilliant. The dynamic Museum, inaugurated in 1966 was a high place of culture under this presidency, it exhibited there until 1977 notably Marc Chagall, Pablo Picasso, Fritz Hundertwasser, Pierre Soulages or Alfred Mannessier. The first part of “Picasso in Dakar 1972-2022” exhibits audiovisuals and views recalling this glorious era. Subsequently, the dynamic Museum was transformed into an African center for the development and research of live performance performers (Mudra-Afrique) created by Maurice Béjart. Since 1990 it has been the seat of the Supreme Court.
