An artwork by South African artist Dumile Feni is changing the way viewers understand Guernica, Pablo Picasso’s famous anti-war painting.
African Guernica, which was drawn by Feni using charcoal and pencil in 1967, is part of a new series at the Reina Sofía museum in Madrid, and is on display directly opposite Picasso’s work. While there are many similarities between the pieces, including a mixture of contorted humans and animals depicted in black and white, the exhibition’s curator is keen to also highlight the differences between them.
Picasso’s Guernica was an “anti-war cri de coeur” following the 1937 bombing of the Basque market town with which the painting shares its name, curator Tamar Garb told The Guardian. Meanwhile, Feni’s Guernica reflects “the violence, the slow violence, and the actual violence of racist tyranny,” in apartheid South Africa.