Special Exhibitions
Picasso: The Artist's Studio
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Special Exhibitions |
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Picasso: The Artist's Studio |
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Later Life Some historians see a decline in Picasso’s art after WWII. They point to his painting Massacre in Korea (1951) as a major failure. Other historians argue that Picasso’s late paintings are underrated, and that any fair evaluation of Picasso’s later art must consider the new paths of artistic expression he opened in sculpture, printmaking, and ceramics. In 1946 he began a prolonged engagement with ceramics while staying at Vallauris. During the 1950s, he produced a series of remarkably witty and inventive assemblage sculptures, often incorporating found objects. He also explored the possibilities of folded-metal sculpture and created a series of cement sculptures during the 1960s. His activities in printmaking include exploring new techniques in linoleum-cut and creating a remarkable series of etchings titled Suite 347 (1968).During his later years Picasso continued to produce paintings at a prodigious pace. He devoted particular attention to re-interpreting masterpieces from the history of art, as seen his 15 variations on Delacroix’s Les Femmes d’Alger (1954-55), his 58 variations on Velásquez’s Las Meninas (1957), and his 27 variations on Manet’s Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe (1959-62). Picasso followed those confrontations with the old masters with The Sabine Women (1962), a theme inspired by the early versions of Jacques-Louis David and Nicholas Poussin. Picasso’s personal life remained tumultuous during the immediately post-war period. Toward the end of WW II, Picasso began yet another love affair with a young artist named Françoise Gilot. She soon emerged as the central woman in his life and bore him two children, Claude (b. 1947) and Paloma (b. 1949). In 1953 Gilot left Picasso, and for several year he maintained liaison with Geneviève Laporte. Gilot later published a controversial book titled Life with Picasso, which he tried unsuccessfully to have suppressed. Although Picasso and Olga separated in the mid-1930s, they never divorced. Her death in 1955 left Picasso temporarily unattached. In 1961 he married Jacqueline Roque, his second and last wife. After a lengthy recovery from ulcer surgery in 1965, Picasso returned to work and produced a final flurry of paintings before his death in 1973. His late paintings frequently portray poignant scenes of the artist and model, with particular attention to the effects of aging on the artist, the loss of sexuality, and the inevitability of death. Executed with vibrant color using a quick, expressionist technique, Picasso’s final works exhibit remarkable energy and vigor for an artist in his 80s and 90s. In 1972, a year before his death, the Palais du Papes in Avignon organized a large exhibition of his late paintings. Although not universally well received, this show did convince many critics of Picasso’s continuing importance. Picasso died in April 1973, at age 91, from heart failure. Although historians disagree about the value of his late works, Picasso remains widely regarded as the most prolific and influential artist of the 20th century. Any evaluation of Picasso must consider his contributions to sculpture, ceramics, and printmaking. Some critics argue that if Picasso had only produced sculpture, he would still be considered one of the century’s most significant artists. Picasso’s seminal role in the invention of Cubism, which radically altered the course of art by redefining the dominant system of spatial construction in Western art for nearly 500 years, likely ranks as his most important achievement. Page 6 of 6 | On the next page: Early Life and Training |
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![<I>At Work</I>, August 1971<BR>Oil on canvas
<BR>The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of Jacqueline Picasso in honor of the Museum's continuous commitment to Pablo Picasso's art, 1985
<BR>[Cat. no. 56]](../illus/(56)atwork.jpg)
