Picasso's African Period

The influence of the exotic was not only limited to its appearance in commercial art and activity. In fine art too we find the influence of the "exotic" coming into prominence. Even Picasso’s paintings were strongly influenced by African masks between 1907 and 1909.He abstracted the figures in his  portraits and interpreted the faces as African  masks. To achieve this look he used the features of the originals: round shapes, long and oval faces and very angular noses almost triangular looking.

Farm woman , 1907

Head of a man, 1908

The first painting illustrated  has really contrasting colours, which separate  the upper part from the  lower part of the painting. Dark colours like brown and black become lighter with yellow tones and then a light blue which slowly develops into dark again. It uses  a flow of dark to light and back to dark again.

Black and darker coloured strokes of paint create shadows and give the portrait a strong 3D effect.

For the second painting Picasso  used dark colours for the main parts but also yellow and white to create  contrasts to give the painting more three dimensionality. I think the shapes he used are very simplistic and all the lines connected, which makes it seem very complicated and busy at first look but then you realise as a viewer how easy and simply the lines are arranged. Further, Picasso's style of painting is very lose, fluid  and almost effortless.

 

Head of a man, 1907

Head of a woman, 1908

These other two paintings are more dominated by  yellow and the paint strokes are obviously visible. Again the distinctive nose of the man and woman create the focus  of the painting. I like the boldness of the first painting as it is very intense through the use of black on yellow and everything seems to be painted a lot bigger than it is in reality.

The second portrait is a lot more harmonious and looks calmer compared to the first. The contrasting use of colour is less, and also the lines are less hard, even though shadows remain a key element. I think his art works show that Tiki does not only work for advertisements and graphical art, but also in many other ways.