Once upon a time Pablo Picasso was nobody in New York.
It is hard to believe, from the perspective of the 21st century, when his paintings are among the records at auctions and, more or less, he is considered one of the greatest geniuses of painting.
Picasso’s first show in the Big Apple failed and even the Met refused to buy works
But that’s how it was. In Europe he already enjoyed fame and in the United States they went by Malaga, not yet universal. He was not of interest even to the reference art galleries that are supposed to have the desire to discover new values.
Picasso? No thanks, they responded at the Metropolitan Museum (Met) in New York.
The painter’s introduction to the United States occurred in May 1910 thanks to an article in an architectural newspaper.
From there, Alfred Stieglitz, photographer and art promoter, set up the first exhibition dedicated to Picasso in his gallery in the Big Apple, for which the artist himself selected the 83 drawings and watercolors that were presented. He put a lot of emphasis on cubism.
They say that, despite good coverage in the local press and notable attendance, sales were poor: only two of the works came out and one of the buyers turned out to be the organizer. Stieglitz even offered the Met to acquire all the contents, an offer he declined.
“Life and history is like that. At first people did not want modernity or contemporaneity. That it succeeds today gives meaning to the will of the youngest artists, who do what they have to do for things to evolve,” responds Bernard Ruiz-Picasso, grandson of the now revered master.
A woman observes the work “Standing Nude Woman” (1910) by the Spanish painter Pablo Picasso, exhibited in New York
EFE/Ángel Colmenares
The grandson is in the room at the Met, an institution that reveals his initial rejection of the artist, where a secret history lost in time, linked to that indifference, is exposed. In this other commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the death of the genius, the focus is on the commission given to Picasso around that same time to decorate a house in Brooklyn.
His work never reached its destination, nor did the painter ever set foot in New York or this country due to the refusal to grant him a visa.
Hamilton Easter Field, artist, collector and critic, was the other buyer, the one of the second work that was sold in that first exhibition. He met the Spaniard in 1909, in Paris. Returning to his city, he sent a letter to the artist in 1910 in which he asked him to decorate his library with eleven cubist panels.
In that epistle he offered details about the dimensions of the room and incorporated drawings, as seen in this exhibition (until January 14) titled Picasso, a cubist commission in Brooklyn. For whatever reason, Field died in 1922, at age 49, without having received even a single piece of the commission from him.
Picasso, however, took it seriously. The letter is part of his archives and he declared to his acquaintances that this had been the type of request he had been waiting for.
A man looks at the works “Pipe Rack And Still Life on a Table” (1911) and “Still Life on a Piano” (1911-12) by Pablo Picasso, exhibited in New York
EFE/Ángel Colmenares
What Field did not touch – the works are known today – is brought together for the first time in this exhibition. The painter only made four paintings that responded to the measurements given by the client: Pipe Rack and Still Life (in the possession of the Met), Still Life on a Piano (Berggruen Museum in Berlin); Nude Woman (National Gallery of Washington) and Woman Reclining on a Sofa (private collection). The exhibition is contextualized with two other paintings that are described as experimental, because they do not fit the measurements, and other creations from that time.
“This exhibition opens up a new way of thinking about Cubism in terms of scale and different proportions, in the context of a decorative creation for a specific place and not as an easel work,” emphasizes Anna Jozefacka, the main curator.
According to his investigation, Picasso did not hide his interest in this request, although he sealed his lips about how to resolve it. “He treated this project as a way to experiment with new sizes, new dimensions, both horizontal and vertical,” he remarks.
Too bad Field can’t see what he saw before anyone else.
2023-09-28 04:00:00
#Picasso #Brooklyn
