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PRESS INFORMATION PICASSO IN ISTANBUL SAKIP SABANCI MUSEUM, ISTANBUL 24 November 2005 to 26 March 2006 Press enquiries: Erica Bolton and Jane Quinn 10 Pottery Lane London W11 4LZ Tel: 020 7221 5000 Fax: 020 7221 8100 [email protected] Contents Press Release Chronology Complete list of works Biographies 1 Press Release Issue: 22 November 2005 FIRST PICASSO EXHIBITION IN TURKEY IS SELECTED BY THE ARTIST’S GRANDSON Picasso in Istanbul, the first major exhibition of works by Pablo Picasso to be staged in Turkey, as well as the first Turkish show to be devoted to a single western artist, will go on show at the Sakip Sabanci Museum in Istanbul from 24 November 2005 to 26 March 2006. Picasso in Istanbul has been selected by the artist‟s grandson Bernard Ruiz-Picasso and Marta-Volga Guezala. Picasso expert Marilyn McCully and author Michael Raeburn are joint curators of the exhibition and the catalogue, working together with Nazan Olçer, Director of the Sakip Sabanci Museum, and Selmin Kangal, the museum‟s Exhibitions Manager. The exhibition will include 135 works spanning the whole of the artist‟s career, including paintings, sculptures, ceramics, textiles and photographs. The works have been loaned from private collections and major museums, including the Picasso museums in Barcelona and Paris. The exhibition also includes significant loans from the Fundaciñn Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso para el Arte. A number of rarely seen works from private collections will be a special highlight of the exhibition, including tapestries of “Les Demoiselles d‟Avignon” and “Les femmes à leur toilette” and the unique bronze cast, “Head of a Warrior, 1933”. One of the highlights of the selection is a group of late paintings of musketeers, warriors, lovers and bullfighters, which were chosen by Picasso to be included in his last exhibition, held at the Palais des Papes in Avignon in 1973. The exhibition will also feature remarkable photographs of Picasso, his studios and members of his intimate circle. A fully illustrated catalogue, with essays by Picasso friends and experts, published in both Turkish and English, will be the first book of its kind on Picasso in Turkey and will provide a basis for further investigation about the artist. The catalogue includes memoirs by John Richardson and Turkish artist, Abidin Dino, and an introduction to the life and work of the artist by Marilyn McCully as well as an excerpt from Michel Leiris‟s celebrated text about the artist and his model. A series of related events, including lectures and films, will be presented throughout the period of exhibition. The exhibition, sponsored by Sabanci Holding, is organised in collaboration with the Fundaciòn Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso para el Arte and with the contributions of the French Institute of Istanbul. 2 Note to Editors: Bernard Ruiz-Picasso is the grandson of Pablo Picasso and his first wife Olga Khokhlova. He was born in 1959. He is Chairman of the Museo Picasso Málaga. Sakip Sabanci Museum: The Sakıp Sabancı Museum, founded in 2002, is part of Sabancı University, one of the leading institutions of higher education in Turkey. The Museum is situated on a picturesque hill overlooking the Bosphorus in Istanbul, on the grounds of what used to be the Sabancı Family residence. It houses a rich and representative collection of Ottoman calligraphy as well as Turkish painting from the 19th century onwards. The exhibition spaces occupy a total of 6500 square metres, including a state-of-the-art annex completed in 2005. Upcoming exhibitions include an exhibition of medieval Islamic and Christian manuscripts from the outstanding collection of the Museu Calouste Gulbenkian in Lisbon. A retrospective exhibition of the works of Auguste Rodin, drawn principally from the Museé Rodin in Paris, will follow in 2006. http://muze.sabanciuniv.edu/english/ PRESS ENQUIRIES: BOLTON & QUINN, 020 7221 5000 (5 Lines) FOR ENQUIRIES WITHIN TURKEY: MUJDE GUNSELI GUNDUZ, GOZDE GUNAL, A&B COMMUNICATIONS +90 212 233 22 38 3 Pablo Picasso 1881 - 1973 A chronology of his life and work 1881 Birth in Málaga, Spain, of Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Crispín Crispiniano Santísima Trinidad, son of José Ruiz Blasco and María Picasso Lñpez. Pablo‟s sisters Lola and Conchita are also born in Málaga. 1891 The family moves to La Coruða. Pablo studies drawing from plaster casts at the local art academy; his father arranges for his son to paint from live models. Conchita dies of diphtheria in January 1895. 1895 Pablo exhibits paintings in a shop on the Calle Real in La Coruða; a local critic predicts that the fourteen-year old “has a glorious and brilliant future ahead of him.” After summer in Málaga, the family moves to Barcelona, where Pablo enters the School of Fine Arts (La Llotja). He shares a little studio with classmate Manuel Pallarès, who will remain the artist‟s friend for life. 1897 In October he enters the San Fernando Academy in Madrid. 1898 Pablo contracts scarlet fever and leaves Madrid; he recuperates for the second half of the year in Pallarès‟s village, Horta de Ebro. They witness the return from Cuba of penniless and barefoot soldiers. 1899 Pablo returns to Barcelona in February; he frequents the Bohemian group of artists and writers who meet at the tavern-restaurant Els Quatre Gats. 4 1900 First one-man show at Els Quatre Gats (February); in October he travels with his friend Carles Casagemas to Paris to see the Exposition Universelle, where his painting Last Moments is shown in the Spanish Pavilion. 1901 After a short trip to Málaga, Picasso moves to Madrid, where he works as Art Editor on a new journal, Arte Joven. Picasso decides to quit Madrid in the spring, returning first to Barcelona and then on to Paris to prepare for his first show there at Ambroise Vollard‟s gallery. According to the poet Max Jacob, “He was accused of imitating Steinlen, Lautrec, Vuillard, Van Gogh, etc., but everyone recognized that he had a fire, a real brilliance, a painter‟s eye.” Picasso claims that the suicide of his friend Casagemas (in February) triggered the Blue period (late 1901-mid-1904), in which the predominant colour of his palette is blue. 1902 He returns to Barcelona and works on subjects that deal with human misery. Back in Paris in the autumn, he does paintings of the women inmates at the Saint-Lazare prison. 1903 He spends most of the year in Barcelona, where he paints an important series of images of destitution, old age and blindness, which have their origins in older Spanish painting. 1904 Picasso moves to Paris in April and takes a studio in Montmartre. Among his new friends are the writers André Salmon and the poet and critic Guillaume Apollinaire. Picasso meets Fernande Olivier, an artist‟s model; she is the inspiration for many works in all media throughout this period. The palette of the Rose period (1904-06) changes to predominantly pink or flesh tones; new subjects include the circus. 1905 Picasso spends several weeks (without Fernande) during the summer in Holland, where he paints and draws the local girls. 5 1906 Vollard buys out the contents of the artist‟s studio in the spring; with the money, Picasso and Fernande leave Paris for Gñsol. The artist works with great energy, concentrating on a sculptural approach to his compositions. 1907 For the first half of the year Picasso is at work on his large composition Les Demoiselles d‟Avignon. He visits the Musée de l‟Homme, where he is impressed with tribal art. His circle widens to include Georges Braque and the German dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, who represents both artists in the following years. 1908 Picasso and Fernande spend August-September outside Paris in La Rue-des-Bois. When he returns to Paris, he and Braque compare their summer‟s canvases. Braque‟s landscapes done at L‟Estaque, near Marseille, are exhibited in the autumn and are described as “bizarre little cubes”, giving birth to the name „cubism‟. 1909 Picasso and Braque begin to visit each other‟s studios in Montmartre on a frequent basis. Picasso and Fernande go to Spain in May, stopping first in Barcelona, moving on to Horta de Ebro. Picasso has a camera with him and photographs the locals, the village and his atelier. He paints cubist landscapes and portraits. 1910 Picasso does portraits of three dealers: Vollard (who gives him his first retrospective at the end of the year), the Germans Kahnweiler and Wilhelm Uhde. At the invitation of his old friend Ramon Pichot, Picasso and Fernande spend the summer in Cadaquès. 1911 Picasso and Fernande spend the summer in Céret. Upon the Picasso‟s return to Paris, he and Apollinaire, who both have stolen Iberian sculptures in their possession, are suspected of involvement in the theft of Mona Lisa (21 August). Picasso goes free, but Apollinaire spends some days in jail. 6 Picasso and Eva Gouel begin a secret affair; he refers to her in his work with the song title, Ma Jolie. 1912 A new phase of cubism is initiated with Picasso‟s use of house paint and the introduction of collage. Later in the year, Braque adds printed papers to his drawings to make the first papiers collés. In the spring Picasso and Fernande break up; he leaves Paris for the south with Eva. 1913 Picasso and Eva spend part of the spring and summer in Céret, where Max Jacob joins them. Picasso‟s father don José dies in early May. 1914 In the spring Eva has an operation for cancer. She goes with Picasso to Avignon for the summer.