African Guernica

This work by Dumile Feni (Worcester, South Africa, 1942 – New York, 1991), which is markedly biographical in nature, emerged in the context of state violence and institutionalised racial oppression under South African apartheid. Created during the 1960s, African Guernica invokes Picasso's work, not only in its title but also in its synergies with the Spanish artist's visual vocabulary. In this way, Dumile Feni's large charcoal drawing also draws on the simplification and expressive distortion of figures, monochromatic tone and dramatic lighting, abstraction and dislocation of space, and even the conjunctions between animals and humans. But it is not only formal elements that resonate in the Spanish and African versions of Guernica; the shared use of a monumental scale is also crucial in highlighting the violence inherent in all situations of war, discrimination and oppression throughout history.