This talk will look at Picasso’s challenge to the idea of ‘primitivism’ in Modern Africa between 1945-73. Lynda Morris is preparing a text for the exhibition of the Royal Tuveren Museum Collection in Brussels in late 2015. The museum is currently closed for renovation and this exhibition will look at post colonial interpretations of their collection of Central African Art. The Belgian context is interesting, since the exploitation of the Congo by the Royal Belgian Company is the subject of Joseph Conrad’s book Heart of Darkness.

Lynda Morris organised Picasso Peace and Freedom at Tate Liverpool in 2011-12 and it toured to The Albertina, Vienna and the Louisianna, in Denmark. She also gave a lecture on Picasso and Politics for the Picasso in Palestine project in Ramallah in 2012.
In the process of working on Picasso’s Political Papers in the Archive at the Musée National Picasso Paris, she came across Picasso contacts with Africa North, South, East and West as well as the West Indies, South America and Civil Rights leaders in the USA.
Whilst researching Picasso and Modern Africa, Lynda Morris was invited to curate an exhibition of the photographs of Vanley Burke: By the Rivers of Birminam, of the Jamaican Community in Handsworth Birmingham from 1960 to 2012. She took the exhibition to the University of Johannesburg in August 2014. She also conducted an interview in Glasgow with David Harding about his time teaching art in Nigeria.

This talk is organised in collaboration with MLitt Curatorial Practice (Contemporary Art), Glasgow School of Art – Glasgow University