Picasso's bull

Rafael Alberti was a Picasso's poet friend. And he did enjoyed calligraphy:












Alberti's "Picasso's eyes"



Alberti's dove of peace



Picasso's dove of peace

Picasso etchings bought for British Museum thanks to £1m donor

City of London financier stumps up cash for 100 Vollard suite prints produced between 1930 and 1937

Mark Brown, arts correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 29 November 2011 16.33 GMT


One of the Picasso etchings in the Vollard suite, showing a Minotaur with a young woman, acquired by the British Museum. Photograph: British Museum/PA

A set of works by Picasso which are arguably the 20th century's most important and prized etchings – 100 prints making up the complete Vollard suite – has been acquired by the British Museum, thanks to the generosity of a City financier.

Hamish Parker stumped up about £1m which allowed the museum to become one of only a handful of institutions in the world, and the only one in the UK, to own a set of what is a remarkable series made by the artist between 1930 and 1937.

Stephen Coppel, the museum's curator of modern prints and drawings, called it an "extraordinary gift".

The suite was at the top of his wishlist for acquisitions. "It is very important acquisition because it makes the British Museum a destination for the study and enjoyment of Picasso – this is the most important series of prints that Picasso made," he said.

Parker, a City fund manager and collector, is a regular attender at events in the museum's prints and drawings department.

At one such event in October last year, the museum showed one of the seven Picasso etchings it then owned from the Vollard suite and Coppel wrote in the label about the ambition to – one day – have the complete suite.

"Little did I know that this had dropped a seed in Hamish Parker's head and I was astonished when on 26 April I received an email," said Coppel.

This said that Parker was at an advanced stage of being able to purchase the entire Vollard suite.

It went on: "If all goes well, a complete set, with the highest of provenance, should be in the department by year end. I am making this donation in memory of my father [Major Horace Parker] who passed away last year.

"Although it might be going too far to suggest that he was a fan of Picasso, he was certainly a fan of the British Museum, especially anything involving education and enlightenment.

"To have this set in such close proximity to the Elgin marbles would be a particular delight to him."

Parker was not at the museum as the announcement was made on Tuesday but Coppel could barely contain his joy at having the works, which represent a kind of visual diary of Picasso's thoughts, ideas and preoccupations through the 1930s.

Almost half deal with the artist's engagement with classical sculpture and many feature his muse and lover Marie-Thérèse Walter, whom he first spotted on the streets of Paris when she was 17 and he was 45. He approached and declared: "I'm Picasso! You and I are going to do great things together."

The etchings also feature Picasso's first use of a Minotaur, a motif he used throughout his career.

The suite is named after one of the century's most successful dealers, Ambroise Vollard, who commissioned Picasso to produce the etchings.

Some 310 sets of prints were commissioned but Vollard's death in a car crash in 1939, and then the war, delayed distribution.

The dealer Henri Petiet bought most of the sets from the Vollard estate and many have been split up since then. Complete sets exist at institutions in the US, including in Washington and New York, the Musée Picasso in Paris, the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra and a small number of private collections – but the British Museum becomes the first UK public body to own a set.

Parker's gift has allowed the purchase of a pristine set which has never been seen in public or exposed to natural light, direct from the Petiet estate.

The museum's director, Neil MacGregor, called it a "very generous gift".

He said acquiring work from the last century was one of the museum's top priorities as "like all public collections in Britain there was a certain neglect of the 20th century for many, many years".

MacGregor said the museum's print room was alone in Europe in allowing visitors to see prints from across the centuries, looking at "the art of now in the long history of the European tradition".

It is all together in one place, unlike for example Paris where the collections are split between three institutions.

The prints will go on display next year in gallery 90 in a free exhibition running from 3 May to 2 September.

Blind minotaur led by a little girl in the night; plate 97 in the Vollard Suite. 31 December 1934. Acquatint with scraper to resemble mezzotint, drypoint and engraving. Photograph: British Museum/PA

Sculptor working from life with model posing; plate 59 of the Vollard Suite. 31 March 1933. Photograph: The British Museum

Faun uncovering a sleeping woman; plate 27 of the Vollard Suite. 12 June 1936. Etching and acquatint. Photograph: British Museum/PA

Minotaur with a goblet in his hand and a young woman; plate 83 of the Vollard Suite. 18 May 1933. Etching. Photograph: British Museum/PA

Minotaur caressing a sleeping woman; plate 93 of the Vollard Suite. 18 June 1933, plate probably reworked late 1934. Drypoint. Photograph: Ray Tang/Rex Features

^

All of which brings a whole new meaning to the phrase "Come up and look at my etchings".

pinhedz wrote:Picasso's 1st bull appears to a rough sketch--and it might be a calf rather than a full-grown bull.

Then he does a full-grown bull with fine and elaborate detail.

Then he starts to progressively make the most important lines more pronounced, and gradually erases all the shading between the lines that he chooses to strengthen.

At last, all that's left is a few dark lines--it's a sketch, but very different from the first rough sketch.

I think that Picasso would appreciate what Hemingway wrote about the art of writing:

"If I started to write elaborately, or like someone introducing or presenting something, I found that I could cut that scroll work or ornament out and throw it away and start with the first true declarative sentence I had written."

I've just read this quote by Blaise Pascal:
I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had time to make it shorter

I posted this at another place

~
l l\_
/ \

It is Bob (wearing a cowboy hat) on keyboards

Or maybe he, whoever he is ^, has just stepped out of the revolutionary war...

David Douglas Duncan - Picasso's photographer

Acting on a plan hatched years earlier with fellow photographer Robert Capa, David Douglas Duncan knocked on Picasso's door hoping to take some photos. A new exhibition showcases some of the images captured of the great painter, his studios, his life and his friends

guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 20 March 2012 17.20 GMT

David Douglas Duncan was working as a war correspondent in Indochina when he hatched the idea of photographing the world's most famous painter, as he had done with other celebrities for Life magazine.Photograph: David Douglas Duncan

Duncan's plan involved nothing more intricate than ringing the doorbell at Picasso's Cannes villa and asking if he could take some photographs. Photograph: David Douglas Duncan

Many of Duncan's photos show the artist either concentrating on a painting or drawing.Photograph: David Douglas Duncan

The access granted to Duncan enabled him to capture the painter's private life and the marvellous disorder of his studio. Picasso is seen here with his portrait Jacqueline With Flowers. Photograph: David Douglas Duncan

The Musuem of Art and Industry in Roubaix, France, features 157 of Duncan's photographs taken between 1956 and 1962. This 1973 photograph shows some of Picasso's laminations stored in Mougins. Photograph: David Douglas Duncan

Some more of Picasso's work, this time taken in 1957 at Villa La Californie, Cannes. Photograph: David Douglas Duncan

Many of Duncan's photographs capture the artist larking around. Here Picasso is shown with his son Claude, dressed as a clown, and art dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler Photograph: David Douglas Duncan

David Douglas Duncan's photographs show his skill at capturing a decisive moment, a gesture or glance caught in a fraction of a second.Photograph: David Douglas Duncan

Duncan says that Picasso wasn't really a clown, he was just having fun. In this photo he joins his wife Jacqueline in a kind of square dance Photograph: David Douglas Duncan

Despite the intimate images, Duncan makes clear that Picasso never suggested poses to fit his image. "He never asked me to take a photograph," says Duncan. "You take pictures, I paint." Photograph: David Douglas Duncan

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXtBsikiY50
Pablo Picasso- John Cale

75 years today since the bombing of Guernica

eddie wrote:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXtBsikiY50
Pablo Picasso- John Cale

Originally by The Modern Lovers (from their album produced by John Cale)