Whenever,
I hear there is another Picasso exhibition, I think haven’t we seen it all and
I am always happily surprised to see his work shown in a new light. This
exhibition at the Beyeler Foundation in Basel, Switzerland focuses on Picasso’s
blue and Rose periods. This show is a reduced version of one
in Paris at the Musée d’Orsay last year, amazingly,
the first show ever in Europe to focus on this period of the artist’s life.
Pablo Ruiz
Picasso (1881-1973)was born in Málaga, Spain
but spent most of his adult life in France which had been the art
capital of the world since the late 17th century. Leading the art movements of the day he became one of
the most famous artists of all time and his works still bring extraordinary
prices at auction. As communications move faster and faster, just think,
Picasso was alive when the radio was invented at the end of the 19th century and today we can get auction results in real time. The headline from
The Art News Paper was “Multi-Billion-Dollar Picasso Show heads to the
Beyeler”. My first reaction was what
hyperbole, what show is worth billions?
Well, remember, these days it only takes 9 or 10 Picassos to reach those
figures!
In my
opinion, great artists first learn how to draw and then add their own
inspiration but that is not always considered true today. In Picasso’s case there was no choice. At 13 he attended the School
of Fine Arts in Barcelona, where his father, also an artist, taught. In 1897, he began his studies at Madrid's Real
Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, which was Spain's top art academy at
the time. By the beginning of the 20th century he was developing his own style. This is one of my favorite
periods of his work and it is the subject of the current exhibition at the
Beyler Foundation.
The art
dealer Ernst Beyeler (1921-2010) and, his wife, Hilda Kunz (1921-2008), created
the Beyeler Foundation in 1982. They
commissioned Renzo Piano to build the museum in Basel, which opened
in 2007. Its purpose was to display the
Beyelers’ private collection of established modern works as well as their tribal
collection Exhibitions are done putting
the collections in context. Interestingly,
the Beyeler has no Picassos from either the Blue or Rose periods. The earliest Picasso
in the collection is a sketch for Demoiselles d’Avignon.
I dimly remember first seeing Les Demoiselles
d'Avignon at
the Museum of Modern Art as a small boy and being a bit confused by it. I am sure I reacted the same way other art
lovers looked at this painting in 1907, whose style they were not prepared
for. Of course, because of its original
title The Brothel of Avignon it was at first seen as salacious, but I was not into that at the age of 7!
Before
1907 Picasso’s work had been far more naturalistic. The Harlequin character from the
Italian commedia dell'arte was a
favorite Picasso figure during his Blue Period of 1901-1904. Here is a great one in the Beyeler exhibition
done in 1901 when Picasso was just 20 years old. It was lent by the
Metropolitan Museum, so I was well acquainted with it.
Another
Blue Period work in the show is La Vie (Life), 1903 from the Cleveland Museum. According to the Cleveland Museum
website, “In 1901, depressed over the suicide of a close friend, Picasso
launched into the melancholic paintings of his Blue Period… restricted his
palette to cold colors suggestive of night, mystery, dreams, and death.” The limited palette may also have been
because he could not yet afford more interesting and expensive colors. The picture has been interpreted in various
ways and with this information I will let you make up your own minds as to it
meaning.
To show how wide the
Beyeler has cast its net, this is a picture I have never seen before, a
painting lent by the Pushkin Museum in Moscow.
It is also from 1901 and called “Arlequin et son Compagne” (Harlequin
and his Companion). It does not look like this date is going well!
Looking at
the Rose Period paintings just a few years later (1904-1906) we see Picasso sticks with the theme. There is The Seated Harlequin of 1905 where
the unsmiling performer looks out from a red background lent by the Berggruen
Museum. This museum is one of the National Galleries of Berlin which houses the
collection of another art dealer in modern masters, Heinz Berggruen.
My final image is The Nude Young Woman on a red
background dated 1906, one year before Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. You
can already see the new direction in which Picasso’s approach to the figure is
going. This was lent by the
Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris.
Museums like to lend for exhibitions that further the history of art and bring
works of art together that will enhance our understanding of the artist. Even
so Blue and Rose period Picassos are rarely lent but the Beyeler succeeded with
this show that is truly a blockbuster!
Bringing you this Missive
was not as simple as most. After several
emails with the Foundation and their Legal department I had to apply to
ProLitteris Bildrecht, the Swiss equivalent of The American Artists Rights Society
to whom they forwarded my request. After
being questioned as to what my motives were and I finally convinced all that my
blog was pro bono and like a review, then more discussions between the Artists
Rights Society and the Foundation’s legal department the way was finally
cleared for me to use the press images above.
No comments:
Post a Comment