Copyright 2000 www.cosmopolis.ch Louis Gerber All rights
reserved.
Pablo Picasso
- The Sculptures
Catalogue book and exhibition review
The Sculptures at
the Centre Georges
Pompidou in Paris
until September 25, 2000. The catalogue book
by Werner Spies is essential for the
understanding of Picasso, a must. Get it from: Amazon.co.uk,
Amazon.com,
Amazon.fr
(Picasso sculpteur) or Amazon.de.
The Retrospective at Galerie Art Focus in Zurich until September 30, 2000.
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) is one of the
great artists of the 20th century. The Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris
dedicates a comprehensive exhibition to his - despite a publication by Werner
Spies in 1970 - unjustly (almost) disregarded sculptures. The substantial
catalogue accompanying the retrospective has been put together by Werner
Spies. Today, he is the director of the Musée
National d'Art Moderne at the Centre Georges Pompidou. The publication
illustrates more than 800 sculptures on over 300 pages. In the analytical
section, Werner Spies explains Picasso's way to the sculpture and,
chronologically, his artistic evolution through his different periods and
styles, which makes this volume the new reference work on the subject.
Spies states that the artist's sculptures have definitively gained their
place on an equal level with his paintings and his graphic works. I would
even go a step further: although the paintings and graphic works are, from
the art history point of view, more important, the sculptures mark the
highlights of his career since they better and more openly express his
inventive force and his humor than the rest of his oeuvre.
The reception of Picasso's sculptures began
late because Picasso himself had made them one of the best kept art
secrets of the 20th century. Until the 1960s, he hid his sculptures away
from the public and, until his death in 1973, almost all of the originals
remained with him. From his cubistic assemblages and the iron sculptures,
which he made from 1929 onwards, almost none was present in museums or
collections. At Picasso's first retrospective in the Galéries Petit in
1932, only seven sculptures were exposed. It was not until the important
exhibitions in Paris, London and New
York of 1966 and 1967 that he released them into the public space.
The exhibition and the catalogue cover all
the spectrum of Picasso's sculptural work: his early bronzes, the
appearance of his cubistic constructions made of metal, wood and found
pieces, the filigreed sculptures and the over-life sized heads of the
Boisgeloup period, the material assemblies with the "encyclopaedically
sculptures" of the 1950s, the tiny figures made of torn and folded
paper, and the late, perception challenging folding sculptures made of
sheet metal and the use of emptiness in his two-dimensional works.
Until September 30, the Galerie Art Focus in
Zurich displays
58 works by Pablo Picasso. The retrospective chronologically begins with a
sketch for La Morte of 1901 (pastel, brush, Indian ink and black
grease crayon on paper; 17 x 20 inches) and ends with Couple of 1973 (colored
felt-tip pens, black wax pencil, brush, grey and and pencil on paper; 13
3/8 x 10 5/8 inches). Besides works on paper, etchings and prints, the
exhibition unites sixteen oil paintings, one bronze, two sheet metal
sculptures of 1961 as well as La petite chouette. La petite chouette was on display at the
Art Basel 2000 where the gallery sold it for about CHF1 to 1.5 million. The
sculpture belongs to Picasso's assemblages which he began in the early
1940s when he came across an old bicycle saddle and a rusty pair of
handlebars on a scrap heap. He immediately put them in his mind to a
bull's head and later executed his vision. His assemblages were a
combining of ready-made, sought out objects to form a work of art.
Picasso's objective was on no account to rationally produce a dramatic
effect, but to create an object from a spontaneous decision, which
expressed his feelings at that particular moment. With La petite
chouette Picasso went one step further. He had the idea of creating a
sculpture of an owl and scoured rubbish bins and scrap yards, searching
for suitable materials. He made his owl entirely from pieces of scrap he had
found, including nails, screws, nuts, a pair of pliers and a metal
saucepan, which, however, have lost their original appearance but have
been skillfully joined together with plaster to give rise to a
"realistic" likeness of an owl (Picasso: La petite chouette, 1953.
Plaster, terracotta, nails and metal box.
33,5 x 22,5 x 19 cm.).
Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris. Catalogue by Werner Spiess: Picasso:
The Sculptures. Hatje Cantz, 2000, 437 p. with 1220 photographs (192
in color). Amazon.co.uk,
Amazon.com,
Amazon.fr
(Picasso sculpteur)
or Amazon.de.
Galerie Art Focus, Zurich. Catalogue: Picasso -
Retrospektive. Art Focus, 2000, 221 p. Available at the gallery.
