MALAGA.- For the next three years the galleries of the
Museo Picasso Málaga will be showing the exhibition Pablo Picasso: Structures of Invention. The Unity of a Lifes Work. Thanks to a close collaboration between the museum and the Fundación Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso, the works on display in the galleries will be changed in order to show around 144 works of art which together reveal Picassos extraordinary ability to create the innovative structures that made him one of the most influential artists of the modern period.
Michael FitzGerald, Kluger Family Professor of Art History at Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut, (USA), who is the curator of this transformation of the museum, has said that Picassos creativity arose from two apparently opposing inspirations: innovation and retrospection, and also that the interplay of these two concepts defines the creative pathways that enabled him to weave together Cubism, Classicism, Surrealism and his other innovations into the unity of a lifes work.
Based on these insights, the new installation has been devised to involve the viewer in the artists creative process and to stimulate our imagination, mapping a new understanding of the work of this great master and creator. Intellectually, it breaks down conventional divisions of Picassos work (especially by stylistic periods and biographical ones in terms of his relationships with women) in order to propose the possibility of understanding his career as a unified body of art. Traditionally, Picassos more than eighty years as an artist are divided into distinct periods. Most commonly, this is done with stylistic categories, such as the Blue or the Rose period, Cubism, Classicism, or Surrealism. In some cases, these categories are further divided into different phases, such as Analytic Cubism or Synthetic Cubism until his art seems to fragment into isolated slivers stacked one on top of the other. Another increasingly popular approach uses Picassos biography as a lens to dissect his career into separate sections. For this viewpoint, his relationships with women are the preferred units. So, we have the period of Fernande Olivier, Olga Khokhlova, Marie-Thérèse Walter, Dora Maar, or Jacqueline Roque.
These divisions obscure the overall unity of the artists output, for which reason the selection and juxtaposition of the works featured in Pablo Picasso: Structures of Invention. The Unity of a Lifes Work challenge that segmentation, reconnecting the different phases of Picassos career. Through this combination of periods and also of techniques - painting, sculpture, ceramics, drawing and graphic art - the Museo Picasso Málaga will present connections that illustrate the ways in which the artists astonishing creativity was rooted in both his previous creations and his most recent innovations.
The new transformation of the Museo Picasso Málaga will thus reveal the coherence of the artists output, moving away from conventional interpretations, which have classified it by periods, by displaying works from different decades of his career alongside each other in many of the museums galleries. Expressed succinctly, the aim is to see Picasso as a creative whole.
A JOURNEY AROUND THE PALACIO DE BUENAVISTA
Pablo Picasso: Structures of Invention. The Unity of a Lifes Work offers visitors a chance to see relationships across Picassos career by combining works from different decades in the same gallery. This approach emphasises the artists creative continuity and the constant interactions between his different styles and techniques and the events of his life. These leaps through Picassos oeuvre give rise to new connections between works that have rarely been compared before, demonstrating how the artists astonishing creativity always remained rooted in his previous creations. To introduce visitors to this idea, the first gallery presents a leap across his career from the late 1890s to 1970.
Despite the great variety of Picassos art, his subject matter is largely restricted to the traditional forms of western art: the human figure, still life, and landscape. The themes of Picassos universe -- The Minotaur, the bullfight, family, and eroticism, among others are presented in the exhibition in oils, prints, sculptures and ceramics across a wide range of his styles and his long lifetime. Each of the galleries of this new display of the Museo Picasso Málagas collection show how he renewed art by redefining traditions and inventing new ways of making art.
The works by the artist exhibited in Pablo Picasso: Structures of Invention. The Unity of a Lifes Work span the period between 1895 and 1972. Most of them are from the new temporary deposit recently made by the Fundación Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso (FABA), including three oils, a sculpture, a ceramic, three drawings and two sketchbooks which will be seen for the first time in Spain. Notable within this group previously not seen in Spain are the oils Paul (The Artists Son) (1922) and Head of a Woman (1928), as well as the sculpture Woman leaning on her Elbow (1933) and Spanish Plate decorated with a bulls head (1957). The first is a portrait of the artists first child in which the sketch-line rendering conveys both the informality of a child caught in the moment and the elegant beauty of Picassos revival of classical styles. The painting Head of a Woman confronts us with the extremes of emotion and dark depths of the psyche that Surrealism made the primary subject matter of art and inspired much of Picassos output during the late 1920s and 1930s. In Woman leaning on her Elbow the artist explores the possibilities offered by plaster as a support, while in Spanish Plate decorated with a bulls head the eyes, the flattened nose and wide mouth again evoke the Minotaurs combination of human and beast, and perhaps even Picasso himself. The new display in the Palacio de Buenavista also includes three African sculptures which were in Picassos private collection.
A new feature is the presence in the galleries of the permanent collection of five small Focus Exhibitions curated by researchers participating in the Research Programme of the Fundación Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso (FABA). These small exhibitions offer in-depth studies of issues central to Picassos artistic development. The themes covered are: the artists relationship with African sculpture, featuring African objects from Picassos own collection and curated by Joshua I. Cohen; paintings on wooden panels, curated by Meta Maria Valiusaityte; the artists plaster sculptures of the 1930s, curated by Rocío Robles Tardío; Picassos life in Paris during World War II, curated by Blair Hartzell; and the enormous mural which the artist painted in 1957-58 for the headquarters of UNESCO in Paris, curated by Giovanni Casini.
EDUCATIONAL AND CULTURAL PROGRAMME
Once again, the Museo Picasso Málaga will be offering an ongoing programme of cultural activities based on this exhibition. Tomorrow, Tuesday 19 March, the Christine Ruiz-Picasso Auditorium will host an inaugural lecture by the curator Michael FitzGerald. A graduate of Stanford University and with an MBA and a PhD from Columbia University, New York, Dr FitzGerald is Kluger Family Professor of Art History at Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut, and director of research at the Fundación Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso para el Arte (FABA). Among his many publications are Making Modernism: Picasso and the Creation of a Market for Twentieth-Century Art (1995) and Picasso: The Artists Studio (2001). His exhibitions include Picasso and American Art (Whitney Museum of American Art, 2006), Post-Picasso: Contemporary Responses (Museu Picasso Barcelona, 2014), and Face to Face: Picasso and Old Masters (Museo de Bellas Artes, Seville, and Museo Picasso Málaga, 2021-22). Also taking part will be the five researchers who have curated the Focus Exhibitions that are part of the new display of the collection at the Museo Picasso Málaga.
The museums garden is housing the interactive installation Cubism Lab, which introduces visitors to this artistic style through platforms on which, in the manner of Cubist canvases, participants are encouraged to interact with a variety of objects. In addition, the museum is already offering lectures, cultural activities and workshop-visits for schools and associations in Malaga and Andalusia, Saturday activities for families and new adult workshops on printmaking and ceramics.
CHRONOLOGY AND CATALOGUE
This June the museum will unveil an extensive display that will present the relationship between Picassos life, his art and contemporary events. This wall-size display, which will be installed in the covered courtyard, will include ten chapters spanning the artists life. Each chapter will include biographical events, documentary photographs and reproductions of Picassos art in order to connect visitors with the art on display in the galleries.
Finally, scheduled for October is the presentation of the catalogue Picasso: Structures of Invention. The Unity of a Lifes Work. With contributions by numerous experts, this publication features more than 500 pages fully illustrated with the works on display and photographs of the galleries. To be published in both English and Spanish editions, the catalogue translates into book form the structure conceived for this exhibition, revealing the concept of unity in the work of Pablo Picasso.