Standfirst: During his time in Paris, Spanish artist Pablo Picasso became a luminaryamong artists, influencing the city as much as it influenced him. Singapore’s Art Trove starts 2012 with Pablo Picasso and the School of Paris – an exhibition that presentssome groundbreaking work by the artist and his contemporaries.
In 1900 Pablo Picasso (1881- 1973) arrived in Paris. At the time, the French capital was theepicenter of European art and in the decades that followed, the artist would become a leading light—with an array of works that demonstrated groundbreaking innovation.
In 1901, Picasso held his first Paris exhibition with French art dealer Ambroise Vollard. The collaboration proved to be instrumental in the creation, as well as the promotion, of some of his outstanding work. In the Vollard Suite, the publication of 100 etchings, created by Picasso between 1930 and 1937, was one of the art dealer’s landmark projects. Vollard championed some of the biggest names in art history. His artists, to name a few alsoincluded Cezanne, Renoir, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Rousseau and Rouault. After his untimely death in 1939, the Vollard Suite fell into the hands of the art dealer Petiet.
The prints in the Vollard Suite bear the hallmarks of Picasso’s work. They include his classical preoccupations, such as the Minotaur (man-beast) and Pygmalion (the artist obsessed with the model), and his passion for woman including the young model Marie Therese.
The exhibited collection is a cross-section of the artist’s work and many of the pieces arehand-signed. The collection includes three choice works from the Vollard Suite of 1933, an original-signed drawing by Picasso, and a fine colour linocut. One of the Picasso pieces is the Portrait of Mr B Cymermann (s.7689), an original drawing in ink on paper that was signed and inscribed by the artist.
The artworks in the collection include original prints, drawings, lithographs, etchings and sculpture. The drawings have certificates of authenticity by leading art experts and the prints— which are mainly hand-signed and from Limited Editions—include information that is well-researched, in good condition and professionally catalogued.
Works by the French master Marc Chagall that have featured in major exhibitions over the years are included in the collection. Three of the drawings came from the collection of his son David McNiel and include an early classical nude, a picture of the bridge where the artist proposed to his wife, and a watercolour of a nude woman carrying flowers against adark background— a common aspect of Chagall’s pictures.
The exhibition also includes work by Spanish surrealist Salvador Dali. There is one drawing, a bronze sculpture and a group of six etchings, in their portfolio of issue, from theConquest of the Cosmos suite. Each is signed in pencil by the artist and numbered XL/CLXXXXV. Dali’s works are humorously lyrical works of surrealism.
The exhibition is a display of talent from the School of Paris and includes work by Henri Matisse, Paul Caesar Helleu, George Braque, Jean Cocteau and Raoul Dufy. It also features a lithograph and an etching by the Impressionist artist Pierre Auguste Renoir, although he was not part of the School of Paris. At the time these were made, it was uncommon for artists to sign their works. These two pieces are very typical of the artist’s oeuvre and include a nude figure of a young bather showing an innocent and charming young girl. Renoir’s portrait of his young son eating a biscuit is an early example of colour lithography.
The photography in the collection exhibits photos of famous artists, taken by some of the greatest names in photography from that period. In the collection, there are three beautiful examples of work by Brassai, one of the greatest photographers of our age. One of the best examples is of his great friend and confidant, Pablo Picasso. It was the photo Brassai took when they first met. A later portrait of an older Picasso and Brassai was made for Picasso & Co, a book which Brassai wrote. There are a number of works by the noted photographerRobert Doisneau, including his iconic portraits of Fernand Leger and Alberto Giacometti.
The largest selection, however, is by the famous Andre Villers, whose works are featured in the Photograph Museum recently opened in Mouguins in the South of France. Picasso features heavily in Villiers’ works but his best may be the portrait of Salvador Dali taken at the Ritz Hotel in 1966. Another portrait of Dali, by Phillippe Halsman, shows a maniacal face staring into the distance.
Art Trove is a private museum. Its exhibition Pablo Picasso and the School of Paris is on display from January 12 to February 20. The School of Paris was a group of French artists who flourished in the era between the two world wars with Pablo Picasso leading the way. The show consists of two categories: art works and photographs.
