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Picasso-Unique Proofs from His Ateliers: Ambroise Vollard

May 2nd, 2012

Ambroise Vollard was one of the most influential figures in modern art in Paris. A publisher, gallerist and collector, he worked with many of the greatest artists of the late 19th and 20th century, Renoir, Cézanne and Gaugin, and later, Picasso. He helped shape his promotion and establishing of the avant-garde artists of his day and of the previous generation. Beyond his work as a gallerist, he wrote artist biographies and encouraged many to take on new and extended projects.

His first exhibition of Picasso’s work took place in 1901, and continued through the 1930s. In 1930, Picasso began work on The Vollard Suite, 100 etchings created over seven years exploring themes of classicism that enthralled Picasso throughout his career. The suite ends with three portraits of Vollard. The printer Roger Lacouriere pulled the impressions.

Learn more about Ambroise Vollard at our exhibition PICASSO – Unique Proofs from His Ateliers at Galerie Michael, May 5 – June 5, 2012.

 

Portrait of Vollard IV, 1937 Etching and aquatint on Montval laid paper

Portrait of Vollard, II, 1937 Aquatint on Montval laid paper with the Vollard watermark

Portrait of Vollard, III, 1937 Etching on Montval laid paper with the Vollard watermark

Minotaure Aveugle Guidé par une Petite Fille aux Fleurs (Blind Minotaur Guided by a Little Girl with Flowers), 1934 Drypoint etching on Montval laid paper with ‘Picasso’ watermark.

Trois Femmes Nues et une Coupe d’Anémones (Three Women and a Bowl of Anemones), 1933 Etching on Montval paper with Picasso watermark. Pencil signed ‘Picasso’ lower right

Bacchus et Femme Nue Entendue (Bacchus and Reclining Female Nude), 1934 Engraving and drypoint on Montval laid paper with Vollard watermark

John Constable: Oil Sketches from the Victoria and Albert Museum

May 1st, 2012

Often called England’s foremost landscape painter, John Constable was one of the first artists to paint en plein air.  The current exhibit at the Princeton Art Museum, John Constable: Oil Sketches from the Victoria and Albert Museum, takes a deeper look at the works and pioneering style of this revolutionary artist.

Constable was strongly influenced by the natural surroundings of his family’s country home and would often return as an adult to capture the local fields and farms.  He used oil sketches to better translate the inspiring color and light that fueled him by painting outdoors.  It is said that Constable painted quickly on scraps of canvas pinned to a paint box lid which he balanced on his knees.  His style of portraying the lush natural environment caught the attention of a younger generation of painters who quickly set up their easels in the wilds of the natural world and contributed to the eventual rise of Romanticism.

John Constable: Oil Sketches from the Victoria and Albert Museum is on display at the Princeton Art Museum until June 10, 2012.  It was organized by the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and will make only two stops in North America.

John Constable, Full-scale study for The Hay Wain, 1821. Oil on canvas. 137 x 188 cm. Victoria and Albert Museum (987-1900) © Victoria and Albert Museum / V&A images.

Picasso-Unique Proofs from His Ateliers: Fernand Mourlot

April 30th, 2012

Fernand Mourlot was an important collaborator in Picasso’s post-war work. His atelier had a long heritage of printmaking beginning with a commercial print shop in the mid-1850s. It was Fernand who would move the atelier towards fine art, eventually working with the most important artists in Paris, from Manet to Miró. While he began with fine art posters for artists such as Daumier, he was also pivotal in fostering the development of the editioned print. This, in turn, led to a greater emphasis on the expressive artistic focus of a print, rather than the communicative focus inherent in a poster. Mourlot’s catalog of Picasso’s lithographs from all ateliers includes 407 images, spanning a period of fifty years from 1919 to 1969.

Picasso, in typical fashion, concentrated a majority of this work into an intense period of regular collaboration, in the mid-to-late 1940s. He began working with Mourlot in November of 1945, with a portrait of Françoise Gilot as the first of over 300 lithographs he would create with the atelier. Picasso would spend entire days in the studio, obsessively reworking his images. His approach was unusual for the medium. He treated the stone much as he had his earlier engraving plates and linoleum blocks, in that he preferred to rework a single stone.

Learn more about Fernand Mourlot at our exhibition PICASSO – Unique Proofs from His Ateliers at Galerie Michael, May 5 – June 5, 2012.

 

Le Modèle et deux Personnages (Model and Two People), 1954 Color lithograph on Arches paper.

Portrait de Famille II (Family Portait II), 1962 Lithograph on Arches wove paper, with full margins.

Femme au Miroir (Woman at the Mirror), 1950 Color Lithograph, Inscribed in pencil verso.

Femme au Miroir (Woman at the Mirror), 1950 Lithograph, Inscribed in pencil verso.

The Departure, 1951 Lithograph

The Departure, 1951 Color Lithograph on Rives paper

Tête de Jeune Fille (Head of a Young Girl), 1947 Lithograph on Arches paper

Picasso-Unique Proofs from His Ateliers: Hidalgo Arnéra

April 27th, 2012

(L-R: Hidalgo Arnéra, Pablo Picasso, and Roland Penrose.)

Picasso achieved some of his most innovative work materially in the medium of linocut, working closely over a decade with the printer Hidalgo Arnéra. He experimented with the printing methods, from the physical carving and inking of the plates to the chemical makeup of the inks, and created about 200 linocuts in this period. They met while Picasso was living in the south of France and was looking for a way to eliminate the time lost between working on a print and receiving the proof from the ateliers in Paris. Arnéra would run the proofs back and forth to Picasso’s studio in Cannes, printing the proofs in the morning so that Picasso could continue working when he woke.

Arnéra was an involved collaborator in Picasso’s experimentation. He encouraged the artist to try a subtractive method of one-plate printing when he became frustrated with the slowness of multiple plates. While Picasso had occasionally used the linocut technique before to a limited extent, his previous efforts, like those of most artists using the method, essentially mimicked the woodcut. His posters tended to feature large, flat color fields and a strong sense of the carved line. As he worked with Arnéra, however, he developed the medium to its full expressive potential, using methods as unique as sanding the plate for texture and wetting an inked sheet under the shower to achieve particular textural effects.

Picasso often returned to and developed extensively the themes that interested him in all his art forms, from the weeping women to the bullfight. However, even with specific compositions he often returned and experimented with various effects. “Danse Nocturne avec un Hibou” (Nocturnal Dance with an Owl) is one such composition, in which Picasso varied the colors and effects of his proofs as experimentation. The first state, printed in yellow on a black ground (formed by an uncarved plate), is possibly one of a kind, while the impressions printed in white on a black ground were rinsed after printing, giving each a unique final surface.

Similar authentications and annotations by Arnéra appear on many of the linocuts in the Musée National Picasso, “La Guerre et la Paix”, Vallauris. Several of the Arnéra inscriptions from this collection are illustrated in the exhibition catalogue “Picasso à Vallauris / Linogravures”, Musée National Picasso, “La Guerre et la Paix”, Vallauris, 16 June-19 November 2001, ill. 2, 3, 4, 8.

Learn more about Hidalgo Arnéra at our exhibition PICASSO – Unique Proofs from His Ateliers at Galerie Michael, May 5 – June 5, 2012.

 

Portrait d’Homme à la Fraise, Variation d’aprè El Greco (Portrait of a Man in a Ruff, Variation after El Greco), 1962 Color linocut on Arches wove with watermark. Inscribed in pencil by the printer, Hidalgo Arnéra, ‘93’

Tête de Histrion (Head of an Actor), 1965 Color linocut on watermarked Arches paper

Picador et Taureau (Picador and Bull), 1959 Color linocut on paper. ‘Epreuve d’essai’ (trial proof) of the fourth and final state, from before the edition of 50.

Pique I, (Pike I) 1959 Color linocut on ‘offset-fort’ paper, with margins. A working proof in black and brown over a light brown background, from before the edition of 50 for Galerie Louise Leiris, 1960.

Picador debout avec son Cheval et une Femme (Standing Picador with Horse and a Woman), 1959 Color linocut on paper.

Pique II (Pike II), 1959 Color linocut on paper. A working proof of the first state of the “Plateau Secondaire” in orange and the first state of the “Plateau principal” in brown over a light brown background.

Danse Nocturne avec un Hibou, 1959 Color linocut on Arches paper.

Danse Nocturne avec un Hibou, 1959 Color linocut on Arches watermarked paper.

Danse nocturne avec un Hibou, 1959 Color linocut on Arches.

Jacqueline au Chapeau Noir (Jacqueline in a Black Hat), 1962 Color linocut on Arches cream wove paper with Arches watermark

How the Vollard Suite draws us into the dark mind of Picasso

April 26th, 2012

Re-posted from the UK Guardian by :

(original post here)

Pablo Picasso’s greatest achievement of the 1930s was his painting Guernica – right?

Wrong. Picasso’s masterpiece of the 1930s is the Vollard Suite, a series of etchings that lay bare his imagination and his creative energy like nothing else he ever did. If every painting by Picasso were to vanish, and only this series of prints survived, his genius would still be obvious from this work alone. Guernica grows out of its imagery: in a sense (especially with its black and white palette) this famous painting is simply a translation to mural scale of the intense symbolism and mythic power of the etchings in the Vollard Suite.

A copy of this phenomenal work of art has been acquired by the British Museum and goes on display for free in its print gallery next week. This is truly one of the art events of the year, and offers more inspiration, stimulation and sheer excitement than almost any other art I can think of.

Ambroise Vollard was a gifted art dealer who had the foresight to back Cézanne in the 1890s and who also had a passion for creating artist’s books (as they are now called). Renoir, one of the artists he represented, portrayed him in a painting now in the Courtauld Gallery. It shows him contemplating a statuette, an archetypal connoisseur with a fondness for fine things. Picasso started out as a rebel, but by the time he began a suite of etchings for Vollard in 1930 he was rich and famous and nearly 50 years old. It might have seemed that he was settling into a respectable mature period, making classy, conservative prints for the luxury art market.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

In the images he etched for Vollard to publish, Picasso explores the furthest reaches of his psyche. He delves into his darkest places. It is a phantasmagoria of sex and violence. In one of the images (above), four girls with innocent faces that might have been drawn by Rossetti gaze over a parapet at an immense monster with a bull’s horned head, female breasts, wings and clawed feet. This incredible chimera is not just monstrous in outline but internally: its form is created by churning, spiralling, ornately involved black lines that seem to swarm and change before your eyes to create a truly spectral being. In fact, the previous picture shows the old master Rembrandt in a similarly grotesque style, facing a neatly drawn classical artist over a drink: Picasso is playing with, joking on, the extremes of artistic style.

That may sound a bit arty, but wait. Here is a bullfight. In a nightmare corrida, a horse raises its throat in a dying scream as it is gored by a bull in the arena. The bull, too, is injured, a spear in its side. At least, these are the details that start to emerge as you contemplate a tangled confusion of heads and limbs, a cubist chaos of flesh and death. At the heart of it all, her eyes closed, floats a woman bullfighter.

This is just one of the bullfight scenes in this amazing series. In the Vollard Suite, Picasso works out his imaginative and emotional response to bullfighting, finding in it surrealistic images of cruelty and ecstasy. This is what I mean by Guernica growing out of these prints: they are the laboratory in which his images of the horse and the bull, so powerfully used in his anti-war painting, are created and developed. This is also where he is most explicit about his sexuality and relationships with women: one section is called The Battle of Love. Yet he also creates lyrical, tranquil scenes of lovers at peace here.

Above all, the Vollard Suite is about metamorphosis – the ability to change one form, one idea, into another that is the essence of Picasso’s genius. Here, in one compact set of images, you can watch the mind of Picasso at work.

And it is quite a show.

Harpy with Bull's Head and Four Little Girls on Top of a Tower with Black Flag; plate 13 of the Vollard Suite, December 1934, by Pablo Picasso. Photograph: Keizo Kitajima /Succession Picasso/DACS 2011

Picasso and Vollard – The Genius and the Merchant

April 25th, 2012

The Venetian Institute of Science, Letters, and Art at Palazzo Cavalli Franchetti is turning the spotlight on the fortuitous and creative relationship between Pablo Picasso and Ambrose Vollard, the art dealer who discovered the master artist in 1901 at the start of Picasso’s career.  The exhibition Picasso and Vollard – The Genius and the Merchant, curated by Claudia Beltramo Ceppi and designed by Gamm Giunti, tells the tale of their 40 year relationship through 150 works of art.

Vollard was the first to offer Picasso a gallery show when the painter was only 19 years old.  He went on to purchase the entire collection of work in Picasso’s ‘blue period’ for a mere 2,000 francs.  Vollard then introduced Picasso’s works to some of the most famous collectors of the day including Schukin, Morozov, Gertrude and Leo Stein, Barnes, Thannhauser, and Stieglitz.

The exhibit includes such well known pieces as “The Frugal Repast”, “The Two Acrobats”, and the “Vollard Suite”.  Picasso and Vollard – The Genius and the Merchant is on view in Venice until July 8, 2012.

Photograph by: RALPH GATTI , AFP/Getty Images

Pablo Picasso, Minotauro che accarezza una donna addormentata, 18 giugno 1933, collezione privata © Succession Picasso, by SIAE 2012

Unique Proofs from Picasso’s Ateliers

April 24th, 2012

Picasso was a major innovator in the medium of printmaking. He altered his methods to achieve singular expressive qualities in his multiples. He worked with numerous ateliers over the decades, including Arnéra, Mourlot, Crommelynck, Frelaut, Lacourière, Desjobert, and Fort. His proofs illustrate the unique working relationship Picasso maintained with his printers and their ateliers. Their craftsmanship made Picasso’s extensive and revolutionary experimentation with the media possible. Works created in collaboration with the great printers represent the breadth of Picasso’s considerable oeuvre in linocuts, etching, and lithography and allow us to examine the working process behind it.

Picasso worked in an exceptional variety of media, and even within the confines of printmaking, he became a master of the craft. Among the printers he worked with, Roger Lacouriere and Hidalgo Arnéra in particular acted as collaborators in Picasso’s maturation as a printmaker. In the end, however, Picasso often ended up astonishing the printmakers themselves with his focus and inventiveness.

The proofs specifically are a unique insight into the development of Picasso’s vision, whether toward a final portrait or illustration or simply an artistic exploration of the object and theme. These are the artist’s working materials, and the products of the actual process of collaboration with the printers. Some, such as the first plate of the Portrait of Vollard from the Vollard Suite, were ultimately put aside and reworked. These offer an insight to the artist’s goal, both in the impressions that strayed from his intent for the edition, and the successive reworkings.

Other proofs are pure experimentation. There are several versions of the linocut Danse Nocturne Avec une Hibou; most of the first and second state proofs were preparatory, however, five proofs of the second state in alternative colors seem to exist as experiments (page 4). The ink was rinsed under a showerhead for an unusual textural effect. Beyond simple finishes, Picasso pursued true innovation in the media. Arnéra encouraged him to work with a single plate in his linocuts, a subtractive method from the 1940s that Picasso developed to its full potential. The destructive nature of the process, in which a single plate is carved further to print each successive state and color, means that the proofs, intermediary stages and subsequently the final states, can never be revisited. As such, the proofs are unique snapshots as much as the final edition. In other media, such as lithography, the ability to revisit a state was an advantage Picasso prized. In lithographic series such as The Departure and Femme au Miroir, the preservation of the various states allowed for multiple explorations of the same image.

Each of the proofs is a unique manifestation of this exploration of the medium and subjects as art objects. Many of the themes—the minotaur, the bullfight, Marie-Therese herself and the other women—are among the same that would fascinate Picasso across the years and media. The ideas and people they represented are superseded by Picasso’s vision and to the process of interpretation. The printers and ateliers who worked with Picasso likewise lent their craftsmanship and technical guidance to a collaboration that ultimately expressed Picasso’s own unique interpretation of the medium itself as well as the image.

“Renaissance Drawings from Germany and Switzerland” at the Getty Center

April 23rd, 2012

Renaissance Drawings from Germany and Switzerland opened last month at the Getty Center.  The exhibit focuses on the Renaissance art that was coming out of present-day Germany, Switzerland, and parts of France between the years 1470–1600. Forty-three objects are on display and all have been curated from the Museum’s permanent drawing collection.  The exhibition includes masterpieces by artists Albrecht Dürer, Hans Holbein the Younger, Martin Schongauer and Lucas Cranach the Elder.

Renaissance Drawings from Germany and Switzerland explores this remarkable time in the Renaissance movement when draftsmen began exploring and creatively interpreting the possibilities of the “line” in drawing.  “What is impressive is the almost athletic way these artists used the pen to make flourishes and sprawling lines,” says Lee Hendrix, senior curator of drawings at the J. Paul Getty Museum. “They were masters of the quill pen, and drew the human form with great animation and contagious energy.”

One of the many highlights of this exhibit is the opportunity to view not only finished works but also the chance to examine sketches used in the progression and building of other projects including stained glass, metal pieces and prints.  Renaissance Drawings from Germany and Switzerland will be on view at the Getty Center until June 17, 2012.

"Dancing Peasant Couple", Urs Graf, Swiss, 1525

Cubist Masters Tour at the Norton Simon Museum

April 20th, 2012

Pablo Picasso is often thought of as the founder of Cubism.  His painting Les Demoiselles d’Avignon is said to have been the starting point of the Cubist movement.  Cubism’s reach has been immeasurable even crossing artistic genres into architecture, design and poetry.

If you love the work of Cubist artists or are interested in learning how this avant-garde movement influenced many renown artists, be sure to sign up for the May 2nd tour “Fragmented Visions: Cubist Masters” at the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena.  The one hour tour is limited to 25 people and will be lead by a Museum Educator.

May 4, 2012
7:00 – 8:00pm
Sign up at the Information Desk

Norton Simon Museum
411 West Colorado Boulevard
Pasadena, CA 91105-1825

Pablo Picasso, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. Oil on Canvas. 1907.

The Steins Collect at The Met

April 19th, 2012

Gertrude Stein is well known for her work as an avant-garde writer but she was also a daring and intuitive art collector. Gertrude along with her brothers, Leo and Michael, collected hundreds of paintings starting in the early 1900s while living in Paris.  The works that became the core of their collection were mostly from artist friends in shared social circles who were unknown at the time.  The Steins had an enthusiastic love for art and opened the doors to their apartments for weekly Saturday salons where their growing collections could be viewed by many and discussed with curiosity.

The Met in NYC is reuniting the Stein collection with fascinated art lovers in the current exhibit The Steins Collect. The show brings together over 200 works from the Stein collection with a focus on Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso whom became close friends of the Steins.  The exhibit seeks to show the powerful influence the Stein family had in the  direction of modern art.  The exhibit begins with Leo Stein’s paintings and prints by Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, Paul Gauguin, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Édouard Manet, and Auguste Renoir which he bought upon his arrival in Paris in 1903.  The exhibition encompasses a variety of mediums including paintings, sculpture, and works on paper and displays the diversity of artists that intrigued the Steins including Pierre Bonnard, Maurice Denis, Juan Gris, Marie Laurencin, Jacques Lipchitz, Henri Manguin, André Masson, Elie Nadelman, Francis Picabia, and others.

The Steins Collect is not only an impressive display of collecting art but also an inspiring one.  The Steins art collection was built over time with great passion for the pieces and this is the same recipe we follow at Galerie Michael.  We specialize in building museum quality collections one work at a time.  Whether you are looking for a Picasso painting for sale, a Salvador Dali surrealist painting to add to your personal collection or are ready to start your first art collection, Galerie Michael can lend expertise and support.  Contact a Senior Art Consultant today to answer any questions:  (310) 273-3377/ art@galeriemichael.com

At Galerie Michael: Colombe Volant (à l'Arc-en-ciel), Pablo PICASSO, 1952, Color Lithograph on Arches paper, with full margins, An extremely rare, unsigned and unique working trial proof where the colors of the "rainbow in the sky" are printed unusually bright and strong. Possibly one of a kind, rarely seen outside of a museum collection. The black ink was printed October 10, 1952, as signed on the stone. The color for the "rainbow in the sky" was printed to the edition at a later date. Printed by Mourlot, Paris., Signed in plate, #911110