9th Annual Mary L. Heuser Lecture featuring Suzanne Preston Blier, Ph.D.

Picasso’s Demoiselles: Africa, Sex, Origins and Creativity

February 7, 2017

For years, Picasso’s deep engagement with African cultures in his iconic Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907) was often played down to avoid any potential embarrassment that one of the more influential works of the western canon, created by one of the 20th century’s most famous innovators, had its key sources outside Europe. In this talk, Harvard Professor Suzanne Blier will reintegrate Africa and Picasso’s other key sources back into the history of this revolutionary work.

Ellison Lecture, Watson Fine Arts, 6:00 p.m.