Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) is best known as the co-founder of the Cubist movement. In his lifetime, this Spanish painter created a large volume of works (including sculptures) that spanned a multitude of styles and influences. He was also an avid collector of both fine art, sculptures and craft.
After his death in 1973, his family donated his vast collection to the French state. The Picasso and His Collection is now housed at the Musée National Picasso in Paris.
Thus far, an exhibition of Picasso’s collection has only ever previously been mounted in Paris, Munich and Barcelona.
So it was an achievement of sorts when Brisbane in the Australian state of Queensland became the first city outside of Europe to play host to this exhibition.
Director of the Queensland Art Gallery Tony Ellwood said that the gallery was proud to host this exhibition.
"We have the facility and this exhibition being held here also promotes the cultural richness and sophisticated side of Brisbane."
It took six months of planning and execution to put this exhibition together, said Ellwood, adding that "it was a six-million-dollar project".
The exhibition is now on display at the Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA) (above) along the South Bank of the Brisbane River until Sept 14. It features over 100 pieces from Picasso’s extraordinary collection plus more than 80 important works by the artist himself.
The Picasso and His Collection covers paintings, drawings and prints by artists such as Chardin, Matisse, Renoir, Cézanne, Rousseau, Miró, Modigliani and Braque, as well as a vast selection of Oceanic and African works.
Also on view are collages, photographs, portraits of friends, self-portraits, and surrealistic and cubist paintings.
Anne Baldassari, the Musée National Picasso director and general commissioner as well as curator of this Picasso collection, said of the artist: "Picasso was known for his plastic ideas, purely aesthetic approach and his openness to ideas from other painters and to other painters copying him."
He had had a high regard for the French painter Henri Matisse in particular referring to him as a great colourist who knew how to blend all the right tones.
Picasso’s emulation of Matisse’s colour blending can be seen in his paintings La Villa Chene-Roc, Seated Old Man and Nude in a Garden.
Picasso also derived influences from a wide number of primitive cultures in Africa and the new media, including photography and cinema, to create new artforms, Baldassari elaborated.
"His art and those in his collection reflect the conversations he had with his friends and his relationship with new, young and contemporary artists," she added.
"It was in his character to view art as a sequence of objects to form a masterpiece."
The whole collection gives a unique insight into the thinking and visual language of Picasso who played a vital role in the creation of modern art.
The range of works Picasso collected over his lifetime reflects a very personal, idiosyncratic collection, and, in its own way, paints an intimate portrait of Picasso the artist.
However, it did make me wonder why Malaysian students were never exposed to the history of art and the works of world-renowned artistes in school.
All I remember of my art classes were being asked to paint "mimpi yang ngeri" (a frightful dream), "suasana pantai" (beach scenes) and a dried chilli.
But in the three large exhibition halls at Goma, I had a quick lesson in art, and how artists like Picasso composed their pieces and turned imperfections into magnificent artworks.
Of imperfections, Picasso once said: "Those people certainly had ideas about composition but they didn’t follow them to the end. They lost sight of them along the way. It’s perhaps this clumsiness that gives them their charm."
Sponsored links:
