The Frick presents Picasso's Drawings, 1890-1921: Reinventing Tradition from October 4, 2011, through January 8, 2012
Pablo Picasso was one of the world's greatest draftsmen. Drawing was his primary medium for thinking, problem solving, invention, and personal expression. It was the link that connected his work in a variety of media, including painting, sculpture, printmaking, theater design, and ceramics, and was a direct tie to his predecessors. Picasso's diverse body of original work on paper broke new ground, while also consciously incorporating aspects of the tradition from which it sprang. This autumn, The Frick Collection presents an exhibition of more than sixty drawings (works in pencil, ink, watercolor, gouache, pastel, and chalk) spanning the first thirty years of Picasso's career, from his first signed drawing to works from the early 1920s. During these same years, museum founder
Henry Clay Frick (1849-1919) was acquiring masterpieces from the early Renaissance through the end of the nineteenth century. Frick and Picasso shared an appreciation of the same artistic heritage, the former as collector, the latter as creator. An innovator who both challenged and continued the grand European tradition celebrated at the Frick, Picasso belongs to the Collection as its most irrepressible offspring, although not actually represented in its holdings. The many references to the works of El Greco, Goya, Ingres, Renoir and others that run through his drawings link them indirectly with the museum's permanent holdings, while the sheets exude the radical new spirit of the early twentieth century.
Beginning and ending in a classical mode, this period encompasses some of the most important steps in his career: his traditionalacademic training, his earlyencounters with works by modern and Old Master artists, his creative interaction with pre-classical and tribal art, his invention with Georges Braque of cubism and papier collé,and his postwar alternation between cubism and classicism-the groundwork for all the developments in his later career. This major exhibition also travels to Washington D.C. and will be shown at the National Gallery of Art from February 5 through May 6, 2012. It was organized by Susan Grace Galassi, Senior Curator, The Frick Collection, and Marilyn McCully, an independent scholar and authority on Picasso, in collaboration with Andrew Robison, the
Andrew W. Mellon Senior Curator of Prints and Drawings at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Major funding for the presentation in New York is provided by Bill and Donna Acquavella, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, and the late Melvin R. Seiden. Additional support is generously provided by Walter and Vera Eberstadt, Agnes Gund, the Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation, the Thaw Charitable Trust, Mr. and Mrs. Julio Mario Santo Domingo, and the National Endowment for the Arts. The exhibition is also supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities. The accompanying catalogue has been underwritten by the Center for Spain in America and The Christian Humann Foundation.
Comments Galassi, "The past decade has witnessed a spurt of activity focusing on Picasso's relationship with the Old Masters and his nineteenth-century predecessors, as well as with non-Western arts. However, this topic has not been examined specifically in terms of his drawing, where many of these references and relationships first appear. As drawing is a common language passed down and embellished by artists over generations, this particular area of the art of Picasso seemed ready-made for exploration. We have not tried to make direct comparisons between Picasso's drawings and those of other artists, but to show the breadth and range of references on both a technical and stylistic level that give an historical grounding to his remarkable innovations and inventions-as well as his awareness of coming at the end of a great chain of artists."
http://www.frick.org/
