GREENWICH, CONNECTICUT.- The Bruce Museum presents “Contacting Pablo Picasso: The Influence of Picasso on American Printmakers From the Collection of Reba and Dave Williams,” on view through November 23, 2003. The unparalleled influence of Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) on 20th century artists is the subject of this exhibition that features more than fifty prints from the private collection of Reba and Dave Williams. The show explores Picasso’s mythic personality and the movements that sprang from and surrounded him, such as Cubism and the early 20th century European modernist movement. The majority of the prints in the exhibition are from the 1930s and 1940s, although Picasso’s influence on American artists and artists working in America spans the 20th century, continuing to this very day. The work of Arshile Gorky, David Smith, Alexander Calder and Red Grooms are included, as well as two original prints by Picasso himself.

Artists have customarily utilized the medium of printmaking to explore, expand and develop their creative and artistic voices. Picasso utilized a variety of printmaking techniques throughout his lifetime and left a legacy of over 2,500 intaglio, lithograph and linoleum cut prints. He is credited with reviving etching, engraving and aquatint techniques and bringing them to new heights beginning in the 1930s until his death in 1973.

The exhibition Contacting Pablo Picasso: The Influence of Picasso on American Printmakers includes traditional intaglio methods: acid-bath etchings and aquatints, lithography, drypoint, linoleum block or linocuts, wood block or woodcuts, and color silk-screen prints, which, beginning in the ’30s, were called serigraphs to differentiate fine art prints from commercial works. 

American artists were exposed to Picasso in many ways. The first time that many artists in America saw the work of Picasso was at the 1913 Armory Show in New York. American modernists such as Walt Kuhn, Arthur B. Davies and John Sloan immediately began to incorporate cubist imagery in their work after viewing the Armory Show. Others, like Jacques Lipchitz, Max Weber and Marguerite Zorach were personally acquainted with Picasso and were greatly influenced by the artist, his philosophies, and his art throughout their careers.
 
The majority of artists of the time were introduced to the art of Picasso through exhibitions at museums, such as the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, CT, which mounted the first major Picasso retrospective in America in 1934, and through reproductions, or as art students at schools such as the Art Students League in New York City and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The Art Students League was a major center for the dissemination of Picasso’s art and ideas. Teachers like John Sloan and Hans Hofmann introduced the stylistic vocabulary of Picasso to young students who were to become some of America’s great artists, including Alexander Calder, Burgoyne Diller, Will Barnet, and David Smith. 

Another important source of Picasso’s influence was the renowned Atelier 17, established by master printmaker Stanley W. Hayter in Paris in 1927 as an experimental printmaking workshop. Under Hayter’s direction, this workshop played a central role in the 20th century revival of the print as an independent art form. Between 1934 and 1939 Hayter worked directly with Picasso and exhibited his prints. With the advent of World War II, Hayter relocated Atelier 17 to New York in 1940. Here artists could share ideas, collaborate, and most importantly experiment with new techniques. Twelve artists in this exhibition worked at Atelier 17, and Reba White Williams states in the accompanying catalogue that "Atelier 17 prints are so infused with Picasso’s images and ideas that ’Atelier 17’ and ’Picasso-influenced’ are almost synonymous."

After the landmark exhibition Picasso: Forty Years of His Art opened at the Museum of Modern Art in 1940, the art world was overcome with "Picassomania." Several artists represented in the Bruce’s exhibition created works in tribute to the master. Mauricio Lasansky refers to his print For An Eye, An Eye II as an "homage to Picasso," and Picasso’s name is included in titles of several works in the exhibition, among them Red Grooms’ Picasso Goes to Heaven and Adolf Arthur Dehn’s Contacting Pablo Picasso. 

The stylistic vocabulary of motifs used by Picasso, such as African masks and faceted cubist structure, along with his ideas, have continued to influence and affect American artists. The art world has gone so far as to make Picasso’s proper name into a verb ("to Picasso"). And describing an artwork as "Picassoid" has entered the current lexicon of art instruction and criticism. This exhibition pays tribute to both the man and his vast impact on the art world.