Pablo Picasso

Works on Paper from the Grunwald Center Collections

June 20, 2006 - August 20, 2006

: Pablo Picasso Sculpteur et son modèle devant une fenêtre [Sculptor and His Model in Front of a Window] from the Vollard Suite March 31, 1933 Etching. Collection UCLA Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts, Hammer Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Fred Grunwald.; Pablo Picasso Le Repas frugal [The Frugal Repast] 1904 (printed in 1913) Etching. Collection UCLA Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts, Hammer Museum, Gift of Mrs. Fred Grunwald.; Pablo Picasso Faune devoilant une femme dormant (“Jupiter et Antiope” d'après Rembrandt) [Faun Unveiling a Sleeping Woman (“Jupiter and Antiope” after Rembrandt)] from the Vollard Suite June 12, 1936 Aquatint and etching. Collection UCLA Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts, Hammer Museum, Gift of Dr. and Mrs. Ernest Grunwald.; Pablo Picasso Petite Tête de femme couronée [Small Head of a Crowned Woman] 1962 Color linocut. Collection UCLA Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts, Hammer Museum, Gift of Norman Granz.; Pablo Picasso Femme au chapeau [Woman in a Hat] 1962 Color linocut. Collection UCLA Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts, Hammer Museum, Gift of Norman Granz.; Pablo Picasso Tête de jeune garçon [Head of a Young Boy] November 7, 1945 Lithograph. Collection UCLA Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts, Hammer Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Freed.

This exhibition celebrates Picasso's remarkable contribution to the graphic arts and The Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts’s 50th Anniversary. Throughout his career, Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) moved between media with agility and inventiveness. In the graphic arts, he created over 2,500 prints and countless drawings. He experimented with a range of printmaking techniques including drypoint, etching, aquatint, lithography, and linocut. This exhibition examines the artist's prolific and diverse contribution to the graphic arts with approximately 75 prints, drawings, and artist's books dating from 1905 to 1968.

The exhibition is organized by Carolyn Peter, director at the Laband Art Gallery, Loyola Marymount University and former associate curator at the Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts, Hammer Museum.

About the Exhibition

Throughout his career, Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) moved between media with agility and inventiveness. In the graphic arts, alone, he created over 2,500 prints and countless drawings. He worked with a range of printmaking techniques including drypoint, etching, aquatint, lithography, and linocut. He never let the technical conventions restrain him, but chose instead to do things that professional printmakers said were impossible. Similar to old master printmakers, Picasso liked to be closely involved in the whole process. He usually collaborated with a professional printer who could offer advice and experience. In another form of collaboration, Picasso also worked with authors and poets to create 134 artist books between 1905 and 1968. Some of his images were direct illustrations of the text while others were more abstractly related to the subject of the book.

One can trace distinct shifts in the style and subject matter of his prints and drawings. Some of his earliest prints, such as Le Repas frugal and Les Saltimbanques, date to his Blue Period, when he focused on circus performers and human vulnerability. In 1909 Picasso began to translate his revolutionary Cubist style into prints. In the 1930s he explored the artist/model relationship in several series including Le chef d'oeuvre inconnu and the ambitious Neo-classical style Vollard Suite. In the 1950s and 60s Picasso began to work in a new print medium – the linocut. This simple technique allowed him to create bold designs in rich, earthy colors. More

Picasso also chose to revisit styles and themes. Bulls and bullfighting can be found in compositions of the 1930s as well as in the 1959 book La Tauromaquia. While forging new artistic ground throughout his career, Picasso also paid homage to his artistic predecessors such as Rembrandt in the aquatint Faun Unveiling a Sleeping Woman and Manet in several linocut variations of Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe. At age eighty-seven, Picasso returned full circle to the subject of the circus in a series entitled Suite 347. This time his characters came directly from his life in a fantastical autobiographical version of "This is Your Life."

This exhibition celebrates Picasso's remarkable contribution to the graphic arts. It also marks the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts. The core of the collection, and the Picasso collection in particular, were given by the Center's founder Fred Grunwald, his wife, and children: Mr. and Mrs. Ernest Grunwald and Mr. and Mrs. Stanley Talpis. We are grateful for their long reaching vision. The Picasso collection at the Grunwald continues to grow even today. We wish to recognize the many donors over the years who have enriched the Center's Picasso holdings including: Rudolf Baumfeld, Professor David T. Cattell, Eunice and Hal David, Mr. and Mrs. Roy Doumani, Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Freed, Norman Granz, Mr. and Mrs. Milton E. Kahl, Barbara Poe Levee, Dr. and Mrs. Sivia Mann, and Mr. and Mrs. Milton R. Stark. We also wish to thank The Judith Rothschild Foundation for generously lending two early, rare prints to this exhibition.