Why did Pablo Picasso become fascinated with African Masks?
Posted March 4, 2010
By The African Art Store
I need to know the link between Piccaso and his African masks, including why they began influencing his style of art andthe reason behind his fascibation with the partciular style of art at the period of his life when he was intruged.
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the shapes. You know the carving and how they looked choppy
I DON’T KNOW that there was a reason. He just came upon them–it might have been that one of the Rockefellers showed his big collection of African art about then–it was just something new and different and intrigued him. Some of his portraits of women look like African masks.
Picasso was looking for new sources of inspiration. It is thought that in June 1937 after he had completed his first version of the Desmoiselles d’Avignon (which was influenced by Iberian reliefs from Osuma that he saw in the Louvre, Paris, in summer of 1906), he went to the Museum of Comparative Sculpture, a wing of the Trocadero Palais, and chanced upon the African sculpture gallery. He spoke about his reaction to tribal masks: They were magical objects, intercessors against everything – against unknown, threatening spirits…..If we give form to these spirits,to help free themselves, we become free. This quote is taken from a translation of a book (p.18) by Andre Malraux; Picasso’s Mask.
If you want to read much more about Picasso and African art not on the web, then see: Vol. 1 of Primitivism in 20th century art, ed. W. Rubin, Met. Mus. of Art, New York: vol 1. p 241 onwards., The source of the quotation above is given in footnote 54.
He came across them in other artists’ studios (remember that many European powers colonised Africa from the 1870s onwards, and African art was starting to be seen in Europe more frequently by the turn of the century) and also in the collections of the Louvre. It was a bit of a trend at the time – Picasso was neither the first nor the only one interested in African art, but was one of the first to incorporate it into his own art, ‘Les Demoiselles d’Avignon’ (1907) being the most obvious. Picasso was also from Malaga, which is virtually within sight of North Africa.