A striking new exhibition at Madrid’s Museo Reina Sofía places Dumile Feni’s African Guernica directly opposite Pablo Picasso’s famed Guernica, creating a powerful conversation across continents and histories. The pairing is deliberately provocative: both works pulse with rage, yet curator Tamar Garb is careful to distinguish them—Picasso reacted to the violence of war, while Feni captured something slower and perhaps more insidious, the grinding cruelty of racist tyranny. Drawn in 1967, Feni’s haunting charcoal work reflects the brutality and dehumanization of apartheid-era South Africa. The exhibition, titled History Doesn’t Repeat Itself, But It Does Rhyme, also carries an institutional reckoning—the museum acknowledges that racist parameters long condemned African art to the margins. For Feni, who died in exile never receiving his full due, this display feels like long-overdue justice.
The Guardian
