operagallery.com Pablo Picasso September 2015 18 September - 18 October 2015 2 Orchard Turn # 04-15 ION Orchard 238801 Singapore T. + 65 6735 2618 - [email protected] Opening Hours Weekdays: 11 am - 8 pm • Weekends: 10 am - 8 pm Preface 2015 marks the 50th Anniversary of Singapore’s independence, and such a substantial milestone calls for an exhibition of equal merit. It is with this in mind that we are proud to showcase one of the most illustrious names in 20th century art: Pablo Picasso. Heralded as one of the biggest names of Modern Art and one of the pioneers of Cubism, Picasso dramatically changed the landscape of his contemporary art scene. Excelling in various mediums and movements, Picasso strived to cast aside conventional ideals, driving forward and exploring new limits all the while establishing himself as one of the most important figures within the art world. 3 We are pleased to present to you these prestigious works by the world’s most illustrious and recognizable Modern artist, in an intimate setting for collectors and appreciators alike. Gilles Dyan Stéphane Le Pelletier Founder and Chairman Director Opera Gallery Group Opera Gallery Asia Pacific Researching an illustrious figure such as Picasso is bound to elicit an array of polarizing definitions. The life of Pablo Picasso began in Málaga, Spain on October 25th in 1881. Not a particularly bright ‘Genius’, surely, is one that repeats itself often, ‘visionary’ another. Tormented, manipulative, student academically, at the age of eight Pablo was already displaying signs of artistic aptitude, a misanthropic – also phrases that pepper history’s perception of the persona, a man whose namesake talent his artistic parents recognized and encouraged. Moving to Barcelona after the tragic death of ensued the archetypical illustration of the Modern artist. Saturated in superlatives (not to mention his younger sister, Picasso was accepted into a local art school where he quickly excelled, graduating history-making auction prices), Picasso’s legacy has been morphing steadily and consistently since by the age of 14 to the advanced courses. He enrolled a couple years later in the prestigious Royal his death in 1973. Separated from his public voice, the Picasso we experience today – assembled Academy of San Fernando in Madrid, but soon after stopped attending classes and began instead through his works, fragmented epithets, ex-lovers and surviving family – is an absorbing yet fabricated to develop an art language independent from the traditional teachings at the institution. A flaneur figure that whets our intrigue into the psyche of the eccentric man. Lionized for his creativity, the drawn to the subversive, Picasso’s early works depicted the prostitutes, beggars and gypsies he 4 revelatory individual that was Pablo Picasso presented a vision of carnality and contradiction, raw would come across in his long walks cutting class, and by 1899 the young artist had fallen out with 5 originality and available brilliance to a society fascinated as much with the human mind as with the traditional methods and into a crowd of vagabond artists and intellectuals in Barcelona. art it produced. Beyond his obvious contributions to the history of art, Picasso was and remains an art world rock star – a rebellious, paradoxical, emphatic communicator whose life and works Moving to Paris at the turn of the 20th century marked a significant period in Picasso’s career. Young demand to be deciphered. and isolated, the works produced in his first three years in Paris are characterized by scenes of misery and isolated torment painted primarily in shades of blue and green. Deeply depressed following the ‘It takes a long time to become young’, mused an 85-year-old Picasso to a journalist in Cannes in 1966 suicide of his close friend, Picasso’s ‘Blue Period’ marked a profoundly melancholy psychological who asked him to explain the transition from the somberness of his early painting to the exuberance state in the artist’s life, while his cheerless paintings inspired little affection in potential buyers. of his later work. Perhaps best-known for his contribution to the birth of Cubism together with Settling in Montmartre in 1904 with the beautiful Fernande Olivier, Picasso gradually emerged Georges Braque - that heroic collaboration that introduced the first truly modern movement in art from his psychological abyss and began painting in lively, vivid hues of reds and pinks, a period in 1907– Picasso’s iconic status was enhanced with each passing decade, a motif of modern art that known as the ‘Rose Period’ that is believed to have culminated in the creation of the proto-Cubism obliterated convention and scrutinized the nuances of change through metamorphoses and repetition. masterpiece, The Ladies of Avignon. Stunningly prolific (13,500 paintings, 100,000 prints and engravings, 34,000 book illustrations and 300 ceramics and sculptures have been attributed to his name over the course of a 75-year career), Honing in on particular pieces from Picasso’s oeuvre would do well to elucidate periods of Picasso’s oeuvre delineates the inner workings of a figure consumed by visual stimuli and external personal and professional growth, however reductionary: the chilling, distorted prostitutes of the attention, carefully documenting a lifetime that he knew would transcend his living self. aforementioned The Ladies of Avignon as a precursor to Analytical Cubism; the 1921 Ladies at the Spring that marked a brief yet somber return to Classical Realism; the momentous anguish and and physical experience, from ambiguity to definition; love to lasciviousness; political freedom to terror of war captured in the 1937 Guernica, a work that remains one of the most potent anti- financial greed. Unapologetically himself, Picasso’s fame, publicly tumultuous love affairs and quote- war paintings in history and revealed a political zealousness that defined much of Picasso’s work worthy ‘Picassoisms’ may have overshadowed the art he produced later in his life, during a time and persona in the years following World War II. Despite these transitions – some so varied they when Surrealism and Post-Expressionism – influenced by his own Cubism – dominated the fine art could have been the product of numerous masterful artists rather than just one – there exists an conversation. Having proven himself a master, Picasso’s later works recall the raw honesty of his inscrutable stealth at the centre of Picasso’s artistic identity that counters his increasing fame. ‘Blue Period’, a reminder to both himself and the public of his first and foremost love of making art. Already the world’s most famous living artist, Picasso’s post-war works take a turn away from the creation of single masterpieces into the varying motif of creation itself, a curious shift into the realm Gili Karev 6 7 of the naïve, demonstrated through crude, childlike imagery that strikingly contrasted with the Curator technical complexity of the Realism, Cubism and Surrealism that marked the previous forty years of creation. Painting with phenomenal speed in simplified forms, Picasso’s later years are characterized with a rapid, almost desperate rate of creation whereby the act of painting seems to transcend the artwork itself. Having proven himself a master of form and technique, these later pieces, made with a range of watercolours, felt-tip pens and coloured wax crayons, convey a dramatic reduction of form into purely compositional ideas, teasing concepts of productivity and repetition through a deeply humanist lens of wisdom and fear. In the spirit of singling out masterpieces, Picasso’s Self Portrait Facing Death, made with pencil and crayon the year before his death at age 91, epitomizes the artist’s focus at this stage in his life, serving as a stunning look into the cryptic eye of this loved and loathed modern genius. A scrupulous evaluator of medium and technique to achieve his desired emotion, Picasso’s penchant for style diversity speaks to a singular devotion to capturing the girth of human emotional Nature morte au bougeoir et à la cruche, 29 January 1937 Dated ‘29-1-37’ (lower left) Oil on canvas 38.1 x 46 cm - 15 x 18.1 in. Price on request 8 Provenance Estate of the artist E. V. Thaw, New York Vivian Horan, New York Exhibited Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Picasso, 3 Oct. 2002-2 Feb. 2003 Literature Picasso, 1901-1971, Galerie Claude Bernard, 1980, No. 15, ill. in colour Edward Quinn, Pierre Daix, The Private Picasso, 1987, ill. p. 151 and 159 The Picasso Project (ed.), Picasso’s Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings and Sculpture. Spanish Civil War 1937-1939, San Francisco 1997, No. 37-023 (a), ill. p. 11 Certificate Claude Ruiz-Picasso has confirmed the authenticity of this work Tête de femme, 1 May 1944 Signed ‘Picasso’ (lower right) Oil on canvas 46 x 33 cm - 18.1 x 13 in. Price on request 10 Provenance Galerie Louis Carré, Paris Diego della Valle, Milan Sale: Sotheby’s, London, 26 March 1985, lot 51 Private collection Sale: Franco Semanzato, Milan, 16 December 1998, lot 240 Carlo Corbelli, Brescia Private collection Literature Christian Zervos, Pablo Picasso, vol. 13 : œuvres de 1943 et de 1944, Éditions Cahiers d’Art, Paris, 2013, No. 268, ill. p. 132 The Picasso Project (ed.), Picasso’s Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings and Sculpture, 1940-1944, No. 44-060, ill. p. 336 Certificate Claude Ruiz-Picasso has confirmed the authenticity of this work Nature morte, 13 July 1945 Signed Picasso (upper right) and dated ‘13 juillet 45’ (on the reverse) Oil on canvas 64.5 x 100 cm - 25.4 x 39.4 in. Price on request 12 Provenance Galerie Louise Leiris, Paris Galerie Beyeler, Basel Jane Wade, New York (acquired from the above, 1969) Sale: Christie’s, London, 30 November 1976, lot 69 Private collection, Europe Exhibited Culan, France, Château de Culan, Exposition Picasso, 1967, No.