Marie-Thérèse’s impact on Picasso’s art was profound. She inspired him to take up sculpture again. The current show is replete with freestanding and relief figures, some identified as Marie-Thérèse, some not, but her influence is nonetheless apparent. Res ipsa loquitur. Her strong, athletic physique, Richardson observes in his essay, "was the inspiration for most of Picasso’s major sculptures." His paintings of her, he continues, were "sculptures in paint. Marie-Thérèse’s body turned out to be the perfect vehicle for his obsessive gigantism." (See Figure au bord de la mer, 1929, Figure 3.)
Picasso’s granddaughter likens the importance of Picasso’s art in this period to his first "creative upsurge," that of his cubist oeuvre from the early part of the 20th century. But in this case he was forging "a new eroticism," she told Leonard Lopate in a recent interview on radio station WNYC after the exhibit’s opening on April 14. As Richardson, who was also interviewed, observed, Picasso moved away from neoclassicism at this time; Marie-Thérèse was the catalyst for a loosening of his style, a cause for experimentation.
In explaining the organization of the show in the catalogue, Widmaier Picasso says she "sought to complement the image of the eternal 'horizontal Marie-Thérèse' (sleeping, supine or passive) with equally numerous images of a 'vertical Marie-Thérèse' (upright, vivacious, active). Guiding my quest was, among other things, the conviction that Marie-Thérèse … always possessed another dimension — that for Picasso, she incarnated the whole problematic of his art." (See Femme lisant à la table, 1934, Figure 4.)
The works, some of which are being shown in the US for the first time, are culled from the family’s collection, but also from private collections and major museums such as the Metropolitan Museum, the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim in New York.
Speaking on WNYC, Widmaier Picasso revealed that one of the exhibition’s highlights and its coda — a flipbook of photos of Marie-Thérèse, showing the mistress posing for Picasso in a photo booth — was only discovered last year. The images appear in rapid succession on a small screen — lasting for a matter of seconds — but the memory of the painted and sculpted woman who suddenly comes alive at the show’s end lingers long afterward.
The exhibition continues through June 25, 2011. The Gagosian Gallery is located at 522 West 21st Street in New York City.
©2011 Val Castronovo for SeniorWomen.com
Images:
(1) Picasso, Marie-Thérèse coiffée d'un béret, 1927. Charcoal on paper, 24 1/4 x 18 7/8 inches. Private collection. ©2011 Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society, New York. Photo by Beatrice Hatala. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery.
(2) Pablo Picasso, La sieste, August 18, 1932. Oil on canvas. 38 1/4 x 51 1/4 inches. Private collection. ©2011 Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society, New York. Photo: © P.A.R. Photo: Eric Baudouin. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery
(3) Picasso, Figure au bord de la mer, 1929. Oil on canvas,51 1/8 x 38 1/8 inches, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Bequest of Florence M. Shoenborn, 1995. ©2011 Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Image: The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Art Resource. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery
(4) Femme lisant à la table, 1934. Oil on canvas, 63 7/8 x 51 3/8 inches. The Metropolitan Museum of art. Bequest of Florence M. Shoenborn, in honor of William S. Lieberman, 1995. ©2011 Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society, New York. Photo by Beatrice Hatala. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery.
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