In the Fiftieth anniversary of the death of Pablo Picasso (Malaga, October 25, 1881 – Mougins, April 8, 1973), the Municipality of Sarzana with the organization of Paloma, a Comediarting project, and in collaboration with the ‘Museo Casa Natal Picasso de Málaga’, dedicate a show to one of the greatest geniuses of the 20th century entitled ‘Pablo Picasso, the origins of the myth’.
The exhibition, which opens on April 8, fifty years after the Maestro’s death, joins the commemorations of the most important institutions and museums in Europe and the United States, and is one of the few cultural projects organized in Italy. “Picasso’s family was Ligurian and it is therefore an exhibition that also acquires an even deeper meaning for this reason, it is a return to the origins – explains the curator of the exhibition Lola Durán Úcar – If there is something that can explain Picasso’s complex personality is his passion, his curiosity, his immense desire to know and experiment. Picasso uses a marked and unmistakable pictorial language, full of genius, which revolutionized the twentieth century, and made it a myth”.
The exhibition, at the Firmafede Fortress in Sarzana in Liguria from 8 April to 16 July 2023, is a complete account of Picasso’s artistic career. On display 18 photographs, some taken by Juan Gyenes, from the Gyenes Archive and others by Robert Capa as well as lithographs, aquatints, etchings, drypoints, ceramics and the famous painting Tête de femme.
The graphic work traces the entire artistic career of the master, from the first works, created in Paris, around the beginning of the twentieth century, when he was trying to make his way as an artist up to those created at the end of his life, when he retired to the villa in La Californie on the French Riviera and portrayed his young wife Jacqueline Roque and at the same time investigated the theme of earth and fire, creating some beautiful ceramic pieces, many of which are on display here.
“Fifty years after the death of one of the greatest geniuses of our time – declares Cristina Ponzanelli Mayor of Sarzana – Sarzana pays homage to Picasso with a major exhibition that accompanies him in major cities and the most important contemporary art museums in the world. We are proud to host an event like this, which is the celebration of a journey that began four years ago and which sees Sarzana increasingly a protagonist among the cities of art on a national level and beyond. This proposal, which will welcome extraordinary works and contributions, is aimed at both Sarzanese and tourists, increasingly present from all over the world, who can recognize Sarzana as an increasingly precious gem. Culture is always the best language to tell a city, and opening the Firmafede Fortress to the contemporary world is the strongest testimony that our Sarzana does not barricade itself in the trenches of the past, but receives and relaunches the stimuli that art is in able to produce. Congratulations to the curator and to those who worked to make this great event possible”.
The exhibition consists of a set of engravings belonging to the most important series, the Barcelona Suite and the Suite des Saltimbanques, the Tauromaquia or arte de torear and Dans l’Atelier, a selection of ceramics and a wonderful oil Tête de femme , the work inspired by one of his muse lovers, Dora Maar. The exhibition is enriched by some photographs by Robert Capa and others by Juan Gyenes, which tell the great master’s daily life.
Picasso’s activity as an engraver is one of the most important of his career. The graphic work reflects all the artist’s creative phases and it is precisely there that his tenacious and passionate talent is best appreciated. With the series of the Barcelona Suite and the Suite des Saltimbanques, the visitor will approach the first years of Picasso’s creation, the bohemian Paris of Montmartre, the melancholy blue period or the much sweeter pink period. He will walk among the portraits of young women, admire the circus scenes and find himself in front of the figure of the Harlequin, taken from the commedia dell’arte. The tauromaquia or arte de torear, on the other hand, represent the theme of bullfighting, one of Picasso’s great passions. For him, bullfighting was a place linked both to his childhood, when the artist went to the bullring with his father in Malaga, and to his nostalgia for his country of origin, Spain. In the first of these series, Picasso also pays homage to Francisco de Goya, a painter who some centuries earlier had illustrated the fate of Pepe Hillo. Another series in the exhibition is Dans l’Atelier, a set of lithographs and lithographic reproductions published in 1957 at La Californie, the house-studio he bought in 1955 seduced by its isolation and the splendid view of the bay of Cannes and which has shared with Jacqueline Roque. Here art and life intersect: in La Californie Picasso studies, works and meets friends and visitors. In Dans l’Atelier various themes compete and dialogue with each other; this is the case of still lifes, the most important genre in Picasso’s painting after the representation of the figure.
The curious and restless character leads Picasso, already a mature man, to try his hand at the field of ceramics. Picasso devoted himself to the art of ceramics with the passion of a child and the skill of the artist. Clay as a raw material and its transformation as a working method led him to discover a new language. Picasso reinvented the form and approached the decoration of vases, plates or tiles, in the same way in which he had been able to reinvent his engraving or painting. His ceramics take up themes already represented on canvas and paper. Thus emerges a universe populated by fauns, doves, female faces, minotaurs or bullfights, who inhabit plates, jugs and vases. Without a doubt the bullfighting theme, as in the rest of his work, will end up being one of the most important within his ceramic production.
Throughout his life, Picasso developed a large body of work closely related to his personal life in which women played a decisive role. This is why the female presence is so frequent in Picasso’s artistic production, whether it be portraits, nudes or idealizations. These are identifiable, real women who become the artist’s muses or models during the sentimental relationship. This portrait depicts Dora Maar (Henriette Theodora Markovitch), a painter and photographer who was her companion between 1936 and 1943. Her biographers describe her as an independent, politically engaged, intellectual and enigmatic woman. The two artists shared a period of great passion and intellectual understanding, but not without strong turmoil. In fact, the period of coexistence coincides with a particularly tragic period: the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War are moments of anguish and fear, convulsive moments that are reflected in Picasso’s painting. The artist sometimes portrays her serenely, but other times she distorts her face, as in the case of Tête de femme which is the last in a series of four portraits made on June 3, 1943 displayed in the exhibition.
The exhibition presents a selection of nine photographs taken by Robert Capa (Budapest, Hungary, October 22, 1913 – Thái Binh, Vietnam, May 25, 1954) of the Picasso family on vacation in Golfe Juan, France, in August 1948. Capa, who had met Françoise Gilot years earlier in Paris, captures the more intimate side of the artist, with his beloved and their son Claude, the couple’s first child. They play on the beach in front of the calm waters of the Côte d’Azur, stroll and have fun, in snapshots that transport us to Picasso’s most personal moments, outside his studio and his creative universe.
The exhibition also presents a selection of nine photographs by Pablo Picasso from the Gyenes bequest of the Museo Casa Natal Picasso in Malaga. Juan Gyenes (October 21, 1912 – May 18, 1995) was a photographer of Hungarian origin, considered a master of light, a classic of Spanish photographic art. In this exhibition some snapshots have been selected which correspond to three meetings between Picasso and Gyenes.