“Unprecedented” inventive mobilization for the fiftieth anniversary of Picasso’s demise

Printed on : 09/12/2022 – 14:36

Ready for 18 months by France and Spain, the “Picasso Yr” will mobilize “38 main establishments in Europe and the US”, introduced Monday to the press the Spanish Minister of Tradition, Miguel Iceta, launching the celebrations on the Reina Sofia museum in Madrid.

These exhibitions will “present all of the sides” of the Spanish artist, born in 1881 in Malaga (southern Spain) and died in 1973 in Mougins (south-eastern France), with a collection of “conferences” and “debates” on the painter and his work, added his French counterpart, Rima Abdul Malak.

The celebrations will start on September 23 on the Mapfre Basis, in Madrid, with the exhibition “Pablo Picasso and the dematerialization of sculpture”. They’ll finish in April 2024 on the Petit Palais, in Paris, with a retrospective on “The Paris of the moderns (1905-1925)”.

In complete, occasions paying tribute to the Spanish painter, described by the French minister because the “most well-known and emblematic artist of recent artwork”, will happen primarily in Spain, France and the US but in addition in Germany, Switzerland, Romania and Belgium.

Among the many establishments mobilized are the Metropolitan Museum of Artwork (“Met”) in New York, the Madrid Prado Museum, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, the Pompidou Middle in Paris, the Beyeler Basis in Basel and the Picasso Museums in Barcelona and Paris. .

#photo1

“Extra” and “contradictions”

The target is to “current Picasso as he was”, highlighting his “inventive heritage” and “the permanence of his work”, underlined Miguel Iceta in entrance of the portray Guernica, painted in 1937 by Picasso, the some of the well-known works on the earth.

This portray – which immortalizes the bloodbath of the Basque city of Guernica, bombed in April 1937 by the Nazi air power, which got here to help Common Franco throughout the Spanish Civil Warfare – is “a manifesto for peace”, added Rima Abdul Malak.

This plea “takes on a essentially particular connotation” at a time “when conflict is raging on the gates of Europe and once we stand alongside the Ukrainian individuals”, insisted the minister, in reference to the invasion of the Ukraine by Russia.

Past the political and historic references, the retrospectives organized throughout the framework of the “Picasso yr” will probably be a possibility, in accordance with the organizers, to additionally look into the “excesses” and the “contradictions” of the artist.

The determine of Picasso, lengthy deified for his pictorial genius, has been tarnished for a number of years by accusations of misogyny and violence in opposition to his companions, positioned within the highlight for the reason that #MeToo motion.

The writer of “Demoiselles d’Avignon” and “La femme qui pleure”, who spent most of her life in France, was notably accused by journalist Sophie Chauveau in her ebook “Picasso, the Minotaur” of to be a “jealous”, “perverse” and “damaging” man.

“It is crucial that the general public know Picasso higher and likewise know the a part of violence that there was in him. It’s one thing that shouldn’t be hidden”, acknowledged Monday Rima Abdul Malak, whereas deeming it essential to “not cut back all of Picasso’s work” on this topic.

The connection to ladies of the Spanish painter and sculptor will probably be addressed particularly within the context of an exhibition deliberate on the Brooklyn Museum (New York) in the summertime of 2023.

© 2022 AFP