Collection connections
Picasso
158.1984 |
Not on display
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, et al.
Three bathers 1913
After seeing a small sculpture from the Democratic Republic of Congo in Matisse’s home in 1906, Picasso began frequent visits to the African collections at the Musée d’Ethnographie du Trocadéro (now the Musée de l’Homme) in Paris. African sculptures, he said, had helped him to understand his purpose as a painter, which was not to entertain with decorative images, but to mediate between perceived reality and the creativity of the human mind. At the same time, the German expressionist painter Ernst Ludwig Kirchner was looking at Oceanic and African sculptures in museums. The flat and angular style of the bathers is similar to that of Picasso’s African-inspired compositions. Kirchner, however, also conflates African aesthetics with the emotional intensity of dissonant colour tones and distorted figures to depict the anxieties of modern life.