PARIS, Sept 17, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – More than 300 works from two key periods
in Pablo Picasso’s early years go on display in Paris on Tuesday, the first
time they have been brought together in the city where the Spanish master
took his first steps toward revolutionary new territories of modern art.
“Picasso: Blue and Rose” delves into the formative days from 1900 to 1906
when the young artist was living the Bohemian life in a Montmartre studio, at
times burning his works to ward off the cold.
“The strongest walls would open before me,” he would proudly write while
absorbing the influence of Manet, Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec and Van Gogh.
The exhibition at the Musee d’Orsay was conceived with the Picasso and
Orangerie museums in Paris as well as the Beyeler Foundation in Basel,
Switzerland, which will also show the works early next year.
Curators managed to secure exceptional loans of works from the Picasso
Museum in Barcelona and institutions in the US, Switzerland and Russia as
well as from private collections rarely open to the public.
The works include some 80 paintings and 150 drawings by the artist in his
early 20s as he absorbed what would become his adopted country, and several
sculptures alongside portrayals of Picasso by other artists.
“It’s the first show in France to consider a period overlooked by art
historians, allowing a chance to re-evaluate the early Picasso,” said
Laurence des Cars, the Orsay’s director.
The museum was chosen because it is where the 18-year-old artist arrived
when it was still a train station, to represent Spain at the Universal
Exposition in October 1900.
“It could only be here,” des Cars said.
– Light and dark –
“We’re going to discover Picasso at 18 to 25 years old, before cubism.
It’s all taking shape,” said Stephanie Molins, a curator of the show.
“He’s not only the unrivalled master of the 20th century but also a child
of the 19th century,” she said.
The show begins with the Blue period, marked by the artist’s frequent
travels between Paris and Barcelona, discovering the possibilities of avant-
garde expressionisms while still under the more classic influences of his
father, an art teacher.
An early work includes “Yo Picasso” (I Picasso), a vivid self-portrait
showing him confident at his easel.
But just a few months later the paintings take on a markedly sombre tone,
following the death of his fellow painter and close friend Carles Casagemas,
who shot himself in the head at a Montmartre cafe following a soured love
affair.
Many of the Blue period works are nearly monochromatic and depictions of
poverty and old age recurring subjects, including prostitutes with a child
languishing in a prison cell.
There are also several funereal portrayals of Casagemas, culminating in
the 1903 masterpiece “La Vie” (Life), where his body is embraced by a nude
woman alongside a mother holding her child.
Yet starting in 1904 his paintings, if not carefree, begin exploring
lighter subjects suffused with the muted yet warmer hues of the Rose period,
while also hinting at the explorations with fragmentation to come.
Harlequins and acrobats abound in the works, as well as erotic scenes that
coincide with the artist’s affair with Fernande Olivier, a fellow artist who
appears in dozens of his works.
“The show is filled with a form of happiness but melancholy as well, in
tune with its time,” said Laurent Le Bon, president of the Orsay museum.