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| La Celestina, March 1904 Pablo Picasso Courtesy Musée National Picasso, Paris, © 2010 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York |
They are remodeling and renovating the Musée Picasso in Paris and what do you do when you start a remodel? You have to get your stuff out of the house so the drunken, surly contractors don’t break everything or leave coffee cups and beer bottles all over the place. The wise folks at the Musée Picasso decided maybe it would be a good idea to send their best pieces of art on a world-wide tour and luckily the curators and staff at the Seattle Art Museum fought long and hard to include Seattle as a scheduled stop. Opening this Friday, October 8, “Picasso: Masterpieces from the Musée National Picasso, Paris” will feature over 150 of the acclaimed artist’s paintings, drawings, prints, photographs and sculptures in an exhibition that is only lasting through January 17, 2011. That’s a small window of time to be able to check out the work of an artist regarded as the most radical, influential and dynamic of the 20th Century and probably the only opportunity you will have to see these works outside of the Musée Picasso. And why is this collection so amazing?
The Musée Picasso’s holdings stand apart from any other collections of Picasso because they represent the artist’s personal collection—works that the highly self-aware artist kept for himself with the intent of shaping his own artistic legacy.
Every major period from the artist’s prolific output over eight decades will be represented, including the Blue Period La Celestina (1904), Rose Period The Two Brothers (1906), Cubist Sacré Coeur (1909–10), and the classicizing Two Women Running on the Beach (The Race) (1922), to speak of only the first quarter of his career. –Chiyo Ishikawa, Susan Brotman Deputy Director for Art and Curator of European Painting & Sculpture, Seattle curator for Picasso
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| Two women running on the beach (The Race), Summer 1922 Pablo Picasso Courtesy Musée National Picasso, Paris, © 2010 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York |
Tickets are still available, but if you need or want to go on a very specific day and time, it’s best to get them NOW as certain dates/times will sell out. For tickets and more information, go to the SAM website. And, remember that SAM members get FREE admission to this exhibition.
– Michael Strangeways
