Heather James Fine Art - Picasso

Picasso: Shapeshifter Carol Cheh

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) was, by most accounts, the most influential and celebrated artist of the 20th century. A towering talent who was also voraciously prolific, Picasso produced an estimated 20,000 works of art and mastered a number of media, including drawing, painting, sculpture, ceramics, printmaking, and illustration. In addition to creating such linchpins of art history as Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907) and Guernica (1937), Picasso was also responsible for inventing Cubism and helping give rise to Surrealism.

Picasso at Heather James Fine Art, a major survey of the works of this 20th-century master, includes paintings, drawings, and sculptures from several of the artist’s major periods, including Cubism. The exhibition also features an important private collection of more than 80 pieces of his ceramics. Although Picasso’s work has made appearances in the Coachella Valley before, this show is the largest to date.

Works on Paper Among the many significant works in the exhibition is a color linocut from 1958 titled Buste de femme (d’après Cranach le Jeune), which translates to Bust of a Woman (after Cranach the Younger). Linocuts form a very small portion of Picasso’s printmaking output, as he generally favored etching and lithography.

But between the years of 1958 and 1963, his residence in the south of France, away from the printmaking resources of Paris, led him to experiment with linoleum and produce a number of strong compositions. This print, an edition of 50, was inspired by a postcard image of Lucas Cranach the Younger’s Portrait of a Young Girl. A powerful image with rich colors, evoking a blend of Cubism and classical portraiture, this piece is considered the most important of Picasso’s linocuts.

L’Étreinte (The Embrace), a 1967 drawing that depicts a man and a woman in a lusty embrace, comes from one of the last visual series undertaken by Picasso. Even as he advanced in years, Picasso returned to the theme of erotic love, particularly between an artist and his model—a relationship Picasso regarded as the ultimate sexual arena. As the artist famously said, “art is never chaste,” and these later drawings are much more passionate than earlier renditions of the same subject, which were more concerned with formal studies than with raw energy. As Marie-Laure Bernadac, contemporary art curator at the Louvre, writes about these later works, “more than ever before, Picasso affirms the erotic dimension of life, in love as in art, and which he paints with an unprecedented wildness… Picasso remains, to the very end, the painter of man, of flesh, and of physical love.”

Nu debout, les pieds dans l’eau (Standing Nude, Feet in the Water) Graphite on paper 9 1/4 x 4 1/2 in. (23.4 x 11.4 cm) Drawn in 1920 Provenance Estate of the artist.

Marina Picasso Collection.

Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe / New York.

Exhibited Little Rock, Arkansas Arts Center, Picasso: The Classical Years 1917-1925, December 4, 1987 – January 11, 1988, no. 12, p. 39.

New York, Jan Krugier Gallery, The Presence of Ingres: Important works by Ingres, Degas, Picasso, Matisse and Balthus, November 5 – December 23, 1988, no. 58.

Buste de femme (d’après Cranach le Jeune) (Bust of a Woman [After Cranach the Younger]) Linoleum, cut in colors 30 x 22 1/2 in. (65 x 53.5 cm)

Printed in 1958 in an edition of 50 Provenance Estate of Victor W. Ganz, New York.

Victoria DeFelice, Irvine, California.

Literature G. Bloch, Pablo Picasso: Catalogue de l’oeuvre gravé et lithographié, Editions Kornfeld et Klipstein, Berne: 1968; no. 859.

L’Etreinte (The Embrace)

Signed, dated, and numbered upper left Picasso, 23.7.67, IV Brush, ink, and wax crayon on paper 22 x 29 in. (56 x 75 cm) Painted on July 23, 1967 Provenance Galerie Louise Leiris, Paris.

Galerie Fabien Boulakia, Paris.

Brook Street Gallery, London.

Sale: Christie’s NY, May 12, 1988, lot 175.

Private Collection, USA. Exhibited Paris, Gallerie Louise Leiris, Picasso, Dessins 1966-67, no. 45 (illustrated).

Literature C. Feld (ed.), Picasso Dessins 27/3/66 – 15/3/68, Paris, 1968, ill. p. 239.

C. Zervos, Pablo Picasso Oeuvres de 1967 et 1968, Paris, 1973, vol. XXVII, no. 495, illus.

M. Leiris, Picasso, Dessins 1966-67, Galerie Louis Leiris, Paris (Catalogue 21- Serie A), 1968, no. 45.

A. Wofsky, ed., The Picasso Project, The Sixties II, 1966-1967, no. 67-312, ill. p. 375.

Paintings One of the real gems in this show is Paloma, an oil portrait of the artist’s youngest daughter. Made in 1951 when Paloma Picasso was only two years old, it is one of many paintings, drawings, and prints that Picasso made depicting his two youngest children, Claude and Paloma, while they were still toddlers.

Picasso himself was already in his late sixties when these two were born. With his status as an art superstar cemented, he could afford to dote on them, spending more time interacting with them than he did with his two older children, born two decades earlier. The difference is evident in his art. Picasso’s portraits of his first son, Paulo, were formally posed and often referenced classical masterworks; his images of Claude and Paloma, however, find the artist completely immersed in a child’s wonderland of fantasy, play, and instinct.

Instead of forcing them into adult contexts, he depicted Claude and Paloma surrounded by toys, crawling across the floor, making art, and spending time with their mother, Françoise Gilot. The flat, simple, cut-out style employed in these works recalls that which a toddler might use in his or her own compositions. Picasso famously said that while he could paint like Raphael at a very early age, it took him his whole life to learn to paint like a child.

Picasso’s imagery throughout his career contained a number of distinctive characters that served as standins for the artist himself—the fisherman, the matador, the painter at work. In the mid-1960s, inspired by a re-reading of Alexandre Dumas’ classic novel, a new character emerged and came to dominate much of his final output: that of the musketeer. Mousquetaire I (Espagnol du XVIIème siècle) [Musketeer I (17th-century Spanish)] (1967) is a particularly emblematic painting from this period. With vigorous strokes, Picasso evokes the image of a rakish and handsomely clothed Spanish swordsman, ready to take on any challenges.

For the aging artist, who was only six years away from his death the year this was painted, the musketeer was a fantasy figure who offered an escape into a golden era of youth, virility and adventure. Playing with the iconic image of the musketeer also allowed Picasso to examine and reconfirm his place in the pantheon of master artists that he admired. These included Rembrandt, whose classic The Night Watch painting was a constant source of inspiration, and Velázquez, the fellow Spaniard whom Picasso esteemed above all other artists.

Sans titre (Untitled)

Oil on canvas laid down on board 31 1/2 x 16 1/2 in. (80 x 42 cm) Painted circa 1896 Provenance Private collection, Spain.

A photo-certificate from Palau I. Fabre, dated 2004, accompanies this painting.

Arlequin au Bicorne (Two-Horned Harlequin)

Signed lower right Picasso Oil on board laid down on cradled panel 15 x 11 3/4 in. (38.1 x 29.8 cm) Painted in 1917 Provenance T. Edward and Tullah Hanley, Bradford, PA (by 1937).

Denver Art Museum, Denver, Colorado (accession # 1973.345).

Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico (by exchange, in 1993).

Private Collection, Spain.

Exhibited New York, Museum of Modern Art, Selections from the Collection of Dr. and Mrs. T. Edward Hanley, Bradford, PA, 1967-68, (traveling to Philadelphia Museum of Art, Denver Museum of Art, Columbus Gallery of Fine Arts).

Buffalo, Canisius College, Works from the Hanley Collection at Canisius College, November 23 December 23, 1969, no. 262.

Literature C. Zervos, Pablo Picasso, Oeuvres de 1917 Ă 1919, vol. 3, Paris, 1949, no. 1, (illustrated, pl. 1).

The Picasso Project, Picasso’s Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings and Sculpture: From Cubism to Neoclassicism 1917-1919, San Francisco, no. 17-279, (illustrated, p. 82).

Clarinette, Violon, Compotier avec Fruits, Feuille de Musique et GuĂŠridon Oil on canvas 39 by 32 in. (99.6 x 81.2 cm) Painted in the Fall of 1913 Provenance Arthur B. Davies, New York.

Katherine S. Dreier, West Redding, Connecticut.

Leslie M. Maitland, Los Angeles.

Anon. sale; Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York, December 13, 1961, lot 86.

Galerie Beyeler, Basel (Inventory no. 7550).

Private Collection, Japan.

Exhibited: New York, The Modern Gallery (Alfred Stieglitz & Marius de Zayas), 1915-1916.

Iwaki, Japan, Iwaki City Museum of Art, Pablo Picasso, April-May, 1984, no. 25 (illustrated in color).

Takasaki, Japan, Gunma Prefectural Museum of Modern Art, Picasso, October-November, 1986, no.

28, pp. 138-139 and p. 18 (illustrated in color).

Hakodate, Japan, Hokkaido Museum of Art, Picasso, August-September, 1987, no. 38 (illustrated in color).

New York, Whitney Museum of American Art; San Francisco, Museum of Modern Art and Minneapolis, Walker Art Center, Picasso and American Art, September, 2006 - September, 2007.

Literature C. Zervos, Pablo Picasso, (1912-1917), Paris, 1942, vol. II, no. 759 (illustrated as Clarinette, violon, compotier avec fruits, feuille de musique, guĂŠridon, and dated 1912).

P. Daix and J. Rosselet, Picasso, The Cubist Years, 1907-1916, London, 1979, no. 626, p. 309 (illustrated).

J. Palau i Fabre, Picasso Cubism 1907-1917, Barcelona, 1990 and 1996, no. 804, pps. 510 and 282 (illustrated).

J. Richardson, A Life of Picasso,1907-1917, New York, 1996, vol. II, pps. 312 and 362 (illustrated).

M. de Zayas, Picasso at the Modern Gallery, How, When and Why Modern Art Came to New York, Cambridge, Massachusetts 1996, no. 39, pps. 32 and 247 (illustrated).

Paloma

Oil on canvas 21 1/2 by 17 3/4 in. (54.6 x 45 cm) Painted in1951 Provenance Private collection, Spain.

Literature C. Zervos, Pablo Picasso: Oeuvres de 1946 à 1953.

The Picasso Project: The Fifties I, 1950-1955.

D.D. Duncan, Picasso’s Picassos, p.244.

E. Quinn and P. Daix, Picasso con Picasso, p.76.

Sala Gaspar, Picasso: 30 Cuadros Inéditos, 19171960.

W. Boeck and J Sabartés, Picasso, p.427.

E. Quinn, Picasso à l’oeuvre.

H. Kay, Picasso’s World of Children.

Colección Ludwig, Pablo Picasso, p.287.

Picasso, Verve, 1951.

Los Talleres de Picasso, Imagenes Modernas, p.132.

F. Gilot and C. Lake, Life with Picasso, p.227.

O. Widmaier Picasso, Picasso: The Real Family Story.

O. Widmaier Picasso, Picasso: Portraits de Famille, p.10.

Le Grapouillot Magazine, Picasso, p.77.

H. Seckel-Klein, Picasso: Collectionneur, p.27.

F. Gilot and C. Lake, Vida con Picasso.

Mousquetaire I (Espagnol du XVIIème siècle) [Musketeer I (17th Century Spanish)] Dated on the reverse 21 .4.67 Oil on canvas 51 x 38 in. (128.3 x 97.1 cm) Painted on April 21, 1967 Provenance Estate of the Artist.

Collection Marina Picasso.

Private collection, Switzerland.

Exhibited Tokyo, Yomiuri Shimbun Sha, Pablo Picasso: Collection Marina Picasso, November 1986 October, 1987, p. 131, no. PC-31 (illustrated, p. 38).

Caracas, Centro Cultural Consolidado, 5 Grandes de España, August-October 1992, no. 5 (illustrated).

Geneva, Petit Palais, Picasso, passion et création.

Les 30 dernières années, July-October 1998, p.

117, no. 31 (illustrated in color, p. 41).

Aarau, Switzerland, Aargauer Kunsthaus, Per Kirkeby. Kristall. Reflexionen. Beziehungen und Bezüge, February-April 2006, p. 104 (illustrated in color).

New York, Gagosian Gallery, Mosqueteros, March 26 - June 6, 2009.

Literature C. Zervos, Pablo Picasso, Paris, 1972, vol. 25, no.

339 (illustrated, p. 147).

The Picasso Project, ed., Picasso’s Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings and Sculpture: The Sixties II, San Francisco, 2002, p. 324, no. 67-163 (illustrated).

L’Enfant au Béret Écossais (Youth with Scottish Béret)

Oil on plywood 32 1/4 x 39 3/4 in. (81.9 x 100.9 cm) Painted on December 21, 1952 February 3, 1953

Provenance Estate of Picasso, (inv. n°13247-L III).

Jacqueline Picasso collection, Mougins, France.

Galerie Louise Leiris, Paris.

Galarie Beyeler, Basel, Switzerland.

Saidenberg Gallery, New York.

Arnold Herstand & Company, New York.

Exhibited Milan, Palazzo Reale, Pablo Picasso, 1953, n° 167 Literature C. Zervos, Pablo Picasso, Cahiers d’Art, Paris, vol. XV, n° 205, pl.121.

D. Douglas Duncan, Picasso’s Picasso, Harper & Publishers, New York, 1961, (illustrated p. 245).

Sculptures Picasso had a highly personal relationship with his sculptures. While he regarded his paintings as his chief resource and willingly parted with them, he preferred to live with his sculptures around him, and did not consent to a major exhibition of them until 1966. As a consequence, his sculptures and their significance were not studied in depth until later in his career.

Today, it is widely acknowledged that Picasso was as important a pioneer of sculpture as he was of painting.

He first revolutionized the field during his Cubist period, when he created innovative sculptures out of common materials and found objects. This assemblage method, which blended high and low elements of culture, was a radical departure from the traditional method of molding and building a sculpture out of a solid material, such as clay. Picasso further tampered with the canon when he invented wire sculpture, which made equal use of positive and negative space, and resembled the act of drawing in air.

In Figure (1960) and Homme au Javelot (Man with Javelin) (1960), both later works, we see Picasso continuing to delight in the unorthodox use of found objects, as a spoon and two forks serve as the head and hands, respectively, of Figure. He also continued to play with spatial relations, making both of these whimsical pieces razor-thin and viewable only from the front. La Petite Chouette (The Little Owl) (1953), a small bronze, is one of many owl figures that populated the artist’s oeuvre. Picasso was an avid animal lover and surrounded himself with many birds, which he tended to trust more than humans. After receiving an injured owl as a pet, Picasso began to regularly incorporate this particular bird in his art, no doubt aware of its significance in Greek mythology as a symbol of wisdom, philosophy and the arts.

Homme au Javelot (Man with Javelin)

Bronze after wood 45 5/8 x 13 3/4 x 33 7/8 in.

(116.2 x 39.5 x 86 cm) Cast in 1960, number 2 in an edition of 2 Provenance Otto Gerson Gallery, Inc., New York, April 27, 1961.

Victor and Sally Ganz, New York.

Victoria Ganz Defelice, Irvine, California.

Exhibited Paris, Petit Palais, Hommages à Pablo Picasso, November 1966 to February, 1967, Picasso’s cast exhibited, (reproduced, no. 338).

New York, Otto Gerson Galleries, Picasso: An American Tribute, April to May 1962, rep. no. 34.

New York, Museum of Modern Art, Sculpture of Picasso, October 11, 1967 to January 1, 1968 (Picasso’s cast exhibited).

Literature R. Penrose, Sculpture of Picasso, Museum of Modern Art, New York: 1971; rep. p. 171.

W. Speiss, Sculpture of Picasso, Harry N. Abrams, New York, 1971, (reproduced pls. 292 and 543).

C. Gray, Picasso and the Past, Art in America, 1962, Vol. 50, no. 1, p. 92.

Figure (Figure)

Bronze after wood and found objects 48 1/8 x 18 1/2 x 7 1/8 in.

(122.2 x 46.9 x 18 cm) Cast in 1960, number 2 in an edition of 2 Provenance Otto Gerson Gallery, Inc., New York, April 27, 1961.

Victor and Sally Ganz, New York.

Victoria Ganz Defelice, Irvine, California.

Exhibited Paris, Petit Palais, Hommages à Pablo Picasso, November 1966 to February, 1967, Picasso’s cast exhibited, (reproduced, no. 338).

New York, Museum of Modern Art, Sculpture of Picasso, October 11, 1967 to January 1, 1968 (Picasso’s cast exhibited).

Literature R. Penrose, Sculpture of Picasso, Museum of Modern Art, New York: 1971, (reproduced, p. 171).

W. Speiss, Sculpture of Picasso, Harry N. Abrams, New York, 1971, (reproduced pls. 292 and 543).

C. Gray, Picasso and the Past, Art in America, 1962, Vol. 50, no. 1, p. 92.

La Petite Chouette (The Little Owl)

Bronze Height: 13 1/4 in. (33.6 cm) Cast in 1953; unique Provenance Victor and Sally Ganz, New York.

Victoria Ganz Defelice, Irvine, California.

Ceramics The centerpiece of Picasso is certainly the ceramic collection. As the scholarship on ceramics practice has increased, so has the recognition of Picasso as an important pioneer in the medium. A major traveling exhibition, Picasso and Ceramics (2004), argued that Picasso was one of the most important ceramists of the 20th century—an artist who worked firmly within the traditions of the medium, and yet pushed it forward with an innovative, conceptual approach. The result is a body of work that is every bit as visually distinctive as Picasso’s paintings and sculptures, but also consistently utilizes the unique shapes and properties of ceramics.

“Ceramics is a logical extension of Picasso’s oeuvre because it integrates issues that he has always dealt with in his art,” says Dr. Karen Kleinfelder, Professor of Art History at California State University, Long Beach, and a well-respected Picasso scholar. “There is a play between the two-dimensional surface and the threedimensional vessel that the pure medium of painting does not allow. In Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, Picasso famously painted a woman’s front side and backside confronting the viewer simultaneously. On a ceramic object, he might show different aspects of a scene that become apparent as you view it in the round.”

Vase à la tête (Visage de profil)—which translates to Vase in the Shape of a Head (Face in Profile)— presents an excellent example of Picasso’s playful, multifaceted approach. This four-sided white vase was handmade by the artist himself in 1956, in an edition of 25. As the vase is turned, four different images look out from its rounded surface, forming four sides—a smiling sun, a human face, a woman’s front side, and a woman’s backside. The piece is charming and whimsical, at the same time showing off the vase’s splendid curves, and highlighting its function as a vessel.

Other wonderful vase pieces include Pichet à glaçons (Tête de femme) [Ice Pitcher (Head of a Woman)] (1952), in which a woman’s head forms the vessel’s body, and a handle and two spouts become her headgear; and Vase à deux anses hautes [Vase with Two High Handles] (1953), which resembles a woman standing arms akimbo, with two handles forming her arms, her breasts and legs prominently painted on the vessel, and her head opening haughtily up on top. Lauded as an innovator of form, these works show Picasso’s unique talent for wresting inventive and graceful narratives out of surprising contexts.

Vase Ă la tĂŞte (Visage de profil) (Vase with Face [Profile]) Ceramic vase Diameter: 13 3/4 in. (34.9 cm)

Executed in 1956, number 17 in an edition of 25

Pichet à glaçons (Tête de femme) (Ice Cube Pitcher [Head of a Woman]) Glazed white ceramic pitcher painted in blue 12 1/4 x 7 1/2 x 14 in. (31 x 19 x 36 cm) Executed in 1952, number 12 in an edition of 100

Vase Ă deux anses hautes (Vase with Two High Handles) White earthenware clay 15 1/4 x 14 3/4 in. (39 x 37.5 cm)

Executed in 1953 in an edition of 400

Visage et Hibou (Face and Owl)

Ceramic 9 3/4 in. (24.7 cm) high Executed in 1958 in an edition of 200

45188 Portola Avenue Palm Desert, CA 92260 760-346-8926 www.heatherjames.com Design: Timothy Tompkins / Text: Carol Cheh / Printer: Print Media Services, Long Beach, CA Images copyright Š Estate of Pablo Picasso/ Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York