"The Mystery of Picasso"

During the recent Pesach (Passover) holiday I went back to the same small gallery in Tel Aviv where I had seen the Chagall exhibition. This time I went to see "The Mystery of Picasso", an exhibition of graphic works and ceramics by Pablo Picasso. The exhibition combined a number of graphic works from private collections, previously not available to the public, and included works from the series such as the "Cocteau", the "Lysistrata", the "Bulls and Bullfighters" and a portrait of Jacqueline Roque, Picasso's second wife. This exhibition was also unusual in that most of the works presented were black and white, with the exception of Picasso's ceramics and some etchings.

Pablo Picasso was born in Málaga, Spain. A child prodigy (Picasso could supposedly draw before he could talk), he first studied painting with his father, then at the School of Fine Arts in la Coruna, Barcelona and Madrid. By 1904 he had settled permanently in Paris. As a teenager, Picasso painted fairly realistic portraits and landscapes. He then went through his so-called blue and rose periods from 1901 to 1906, in which he depicted such things as poverty-stricken children and circus scenes. In 1907 he painted "Les Demoiselles d’Avignon," a distorted portrait of five prostitutes that is considered one of his most revolutionary pieces. This painting marked a break with the realist tradition and opened the door for Cubism, an abstract style that reduces subjects to geometric forms. By 1912 Picasso had begun to experiment with textures, using newspapers, parts of objects and pieces of musical instruments in his art. Later in life, he practised a form of Neoclassicism and recreated paintings from such masters as Diego Velázquez, Édouard Manet and Eugène Delacroix. At various times, he also incorporated Surrealist, Expressionist, Post-Impressionist, and Symbolist elements into his art, as well as creating works as a sculptor, ceramicist and graphic artist.

Jean Cocteau (1189-1963) was a French writer, painter and theatrical figure, and for many years he and Picasso maintained a close friendship. Together they created a project in which Picasso presented his lithographic drawings, above, and Cocteau wrote poems about them. This series used the technique of transfer lithography, by which the tusche drawing is made on paper instead of on the lithographic stone. The drawing is then transferred to the stone and printed in the usual way. This freed Picasso from the need to work directly on stone.

Picasso first met the newly divorced Jacqueline Roque in 1953, and they eventually got married in 1961. In November 1956 he set to work on Jacqueline's portrait for an exhibition poster, above. Hardly ever satisfied, he started on a second three-coloured portrait a few days later.

Picasso created the "Toros Y Toreros" (Bulls and Bullfighters) series, above, in 1961. He was fascinated by bullfighting, a theme that represented his cultural heritage and preoccupied him during most of his career. He developed his passion for bullfights as a boy growing up in the city of Málaga, where he was introduced to the sport by his father. The young artist was captivated by the spectacle of man versus beast, the feeling that life can end at any moment, the bravery of the bullfighter, and the culmination of a wild animal's life. He continued to attend bullfights while living in France, inviting friends and family to join him. The drawings for "Toros Y Toreros" covered a period from 1950 to 1960, during which time he enjoyed seeing the leading bullfighter, Dominguin, bullfight in the arenas of Nîmes, Arles, Frejus and Vallauris.

The ceramics created by Pablo Picasso, ("Petit Visage No. 12", 1963 (top plate) and "Plate with a bouquet and an apple", 1956, below), illustrates the idea that for a creative person there is no such thing as "too late". Picasso became interested in ceramics when he was over 60. After the liberation of Paris and the end of World War II, Picasso spent more and more time in the south of France. In 1946, he visited a pottery exhibition in the town of Vallauris, where pottery has been produced since Roman times. There he met Suzanne and Georges Ramié, owners of the Madoura ceramics workshop and he accepted their invitation to model a few small clay pieces. Picasso began to work at Madoura about a year later, in the autumn of 1947. The Ramié family gave him access to all the tools and resources he needed to express his creativity with ceramics and, in exchange, the family would produce and sell his ceramic work. This collaboration with the local ceramicists spanned 25 years. It was during this time that Picasso became acquainted with his future second wife, Jacqueline Roque, who worked there as an assistant.

In 1934 Picasso was commissioned by the New York literary entrepreneur George Macey to illustrate a special edition of Aristophanes’s Lysistrata - a Greek comedy about a woman who sets out to end the Peloponnesian War by convincing her countrywomen to withhold sex from their war-bound husbands and lovers. Macey’s edition included six original etchings by Picasso and 34 line block reproductions of the drawings. Picasso’s signature style of simple, elegant lines and expressive sensuality seemed to be a perfect fit for the ancient classic, which, though comedic in nature, also offered a far-sighted backdrop for Picasso’s own anti-war paintings a few years later.
Despite the military subject matter of the series, the works were filled with harmony and peace. At the time Picasso was in a relationship with Marie-Thérèse Walter, his mistress and the mother of his daughter, Maya Widmaier-Picasso. Marie-Thérèse's features can be recognised in most of the female images from that period.
Picasso's etching "Two Elders and Ships" from the Lysistrata series can be seen above.

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Marc Chagall "My Life"

One recent Friday morning I hopped over to Tel Aviv with friends to see the exhibition Marc Chagall "My Life". It was held in a tiny private gallery on Rothschild Boulevard, one of the principal streets in the centre of Tel Aviv and also one of the "coolest". The exhibition was so small that, frankly, we weren't there for very long, but what we saw was a real treat!

Altmans Gallery specializes in lithographs and engravings, as well as works of contemporary Russian painters and graphic artists, ceramics, porcelain and sculpture. Lithography, from the ancient Greek lithos, meaning "stone", was invented in Germany in the 18th century. It is a method of printing from a stone or metal plate onto paper or other suitable material.

Marc Chagall (1887-1985), once dubbed "the quintessential Jewish artist of the 20th Century," was a Russian-born artist who worked in just about every artistic medium, including fine prints, etchings and the lithographs which were celebrated in this exhibition. He discovered lithography for himself in the late 1940s, in the workshop of the New York graphic artist Albert Kermen. One of his first experiments with lithography was a series of 13 lithographs based on four stories from The Arabian Nights.

Chagall's lithographs often centre on the topic of emigration as he escaped Russia to flee antisemitism, went to Europe and then escaped Nazi persecution by going to New York. Other recurrent themes are illustrations of village life in his native Russia - images of a red cow, an angel, fiddler on the roof and birds - and scenes of Paris, his beloved adopted city. Chagall was raised in a Hasidic family and studied Hebrew and the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) as a young boy. Many of the motifs in his art were inspired by these teachings. He also travelled to Jerusalem in 1931 to discover and experience the Holy Land. He later painted 12 windows that were installed in the synagogue of the Hadassah Medical Centre in Ein Kerem, Jerusalem. Each of the twelve windows represents one of the Tribes of Israel.

The exhibition, which was timed to mark 130 years since Chagall's birth, presented more than 20 black and white and coloured lithographs, privately owned by the gallery. These included rare prints such as "The Yellow Sun" (1968), "Chloe Dressed and Capped by Cleariste" (1961), as well as a unique signed monotype "Le Bouffon" (1965). Some of the lithographs had never been exhibited in Israel before and some were being shown together for the first time within the framework of one exhibition. We saw Chagall's prints from his famous Biblical series, as well as works dedicated to Paris, his beloved adopted city, Vitebsk, his hometown, and childhood memories of the artist.
Chagall's Biblical series is considered to be one of the most important stages of his work. According to his own recollections, this theme attracted him in his first years in Paris, but the trip to Palestine, Syria and Egypt in 1931 served as a basis for deeper understanding of the subject. On his return he made 105 etching sheets, then picked up the theme once again twenty five years later, in 1952-56, with the series titled Drawings for the Bible. This series comprised of 24 colour lithographs illustrating tales from the Bible and was published by Verve, Paris and printed by Mourlot, Paris from 1958-1960.

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