The summer of Picasso

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This article was published 12/05/2017 (3412 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Winnipeg’s summer with celebrated Spanish painter Pablo Picasso began Friday morning as Winnipeg Art Gallery staff finished hanging the 1945 painting La Lampe et les cerises (Lamp and Cherries).

The gallery will unveil two new exhibitions devoted to the versatile Picasso today, but gallery members got a sneak peek Friday night at the 135 works that will dominate the third floor of the Memorial Boulevard landmark.

“Picasso is back at the WAG for the first time in decades and the community and tourists are in for a treat,” said Stephen Borys, the gallery’s director and CEO Friday.

The first exhibition, Picasso in Canada, is the gallery’s contribution to Canada’s 150th anniversary, and includes a selection of 35 pieces of art that are part of museum and private collections across the country, including Winnipeg. The second is Picasso: Man & Beast: The Vollard Suite of Prints, a series of 100 extremely rare prints made from etchings Picasso created in the 1930s that are on loan from the National Gallery of Canada, which purchased the set in 1957.

Picasso was arguably the most influential and the most prolific artist of the 20th century, making art nearly every day from his childhood in Spain until his death in 1973 in France, where he spent most of his adult years.

“I certainly think he’s the undisputed, most important artist of the 20th century. There is no later artist who had the impact to what Picasso achieved,” says Molly Ott Ambler, a senior vice-president with Sotheby’s auction house in New York, where she is one of the researchers who appraises and authenticates artworks prior to sales.

“Many artists pick something they’re interested in and continue to repeat themselves. Picasso is one of those rare creatures who innovated until the last moments of his life.”

Picasso and Canada’s focus is on colourful paintings and ceramics from five decades from the artist’s lifetime, and provide a glimpse of the avant garde. One of the highlight pieces is the 1927 painting Femme assise, on loan from the Art Gallery of Ontario, which shows off Picasso’s surrealistic side.

“The Picasso in Canada exhibit provides a lot more context. He was an artist of 70 years,” says Sonia Del Re, the associate curator of European prints and drawings for the National Gallery of Canada, who was at the WAG on Friday for the uncrating.

The Vollard Suite are black-and-white prints made from etchings, and vary from seemingly simple drawings of Picasso’s lover at the time, Marie-Thérèse Walter, to lavish sketches that depict minotaurs and other monsters taking part in Picasso’s lurid fantasies.

Picasso agreed to create the series of prints for art dealer Ambroise Vollard in 1930 in exchange for paintings by Paul Cézanne and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. It took him seven years to make them, but Vollard’s death in a car crash and the Second World War kept them under wraps until the mid-1950s.

More than 200 versions were made, but there are only about a dozen of the complete sets left in existence, as many art collectors have sold the prints piece by piece over the years.

“The suite is one of the jewels of the National Gallery’s collections,” says Del Re.

Many of the prints have sexual overtones, and the exhibition comes with a mature content warning for visitors.

“All of Picasso’s oeuvre has an element of eroticism,” Del Re says. “ (The suite) is a reflection of his eroticism.”

Walter had peculiar facial features that fascinated Picasso, and Del Re says viewers can witness how their relationship changed over the years by comparing earlier Vollard Suite prints with later ones.

“It starts as a passionate affair and it becomes a lot more complex when Marie-Thérèse becomes pregnant,” Del Re says. “Then you see how his representation of monsters like the minotaur change entirely from this overtly sexual beast to this old, aging blind character that needs to be led by this figure of Marie-Thérèse.”

Included in the exhibitions is a 1956 film of a shirtless Picasso at work, starting with a simple drawing of flowers and transforming it into a fish, and then into a rooster — seemingly just another day at the office for the celebrated artist.

Picasso’s works in the two exhibitions, in artistic value, are priceless and come close to representing the prolific artist’s lifetime of work. From a financial standpoint, if the pieces were to find their way to an auction block, the monetary value would likely pay the annual salaries of a Stanley Cup-winning hockey team, with plenty of cash left over for the champagne.

For instance, a similar version of the Vollard Suite, which Picasso created between 1930 and 1937, went up for auction at Sotheby’s in New York in 2016 and sold for US$2.532 million.

“It’s very exciting and unusual to find a full set. It’s something our collector base is always excited to hear,” says Sotheby’s Ott Ambler.

The National Gallery bought their version way back in 1957 when the series first hit the market. It paid less than $10,000 for them, one of the galleries’ shrewdest purchases.

“It was quite a gutsy move,” Del Re says. “In 1957, Picasso was not entirely accepted by the art establishment.”

Both exhibits remain on display at the gallery until Aug. 13. The WAG is hosting guided tours today, led by Borys and Del Re, starting at 2 p.m. WAG curator Andrew Kear will hold a tour May 31 and Borys will provide another tour June 2. Picasso-themed Mediterranean feasts, which include tours, are scheduled for June 8, July 6 and Aug. 10. A talk, Christianity in Picasso’s Art, with Jesús Ángel Miguel Garcia of the Spanish Institute, will be held July 13. The gallery will also hold daily screenings of the 1981 film Pablo Picasso: The Legacy of a Genius, during the exhibitions’ run.

 

alan.small@freepress.mb.caTwitter:@AlanDSmall