Calder et Picasso
The two artists participated in the Spanish Pavilion at the 1937 International Exposition in Paris. Visitors entered on the ground floor, where lectures, events, and meetings were held. That was the space where Picasso’s Guernica was set in dialogue with Alexander Calder’s Mercury Fountain. However, the two artists had already had a chance to meet earlier. For about ten years, Calder had been producing abstract mobiles and showed a strong interest in Picasso’s wire sculptures. Therefore, the painter was at the root of what would be referred to as “transparent” sculpture, which appeared as the result of a “drawing in space”.
Each in his own way, they both opened up new perspectives, seeking a new gesture and a different way of relating to space and to the viewer within that space, another way of understanding materials in terms of mass, weight, and resistance, as well as of lightness and poetry.
Exploring both figurative and abstract themes, the “Calder-Picasso” exhibition examines the expression of “empty space” in the works of both these artists, in their resonances and their differences. The project focuses on the relationship between the two men, their common ground, their encounters, their artistic collaborations and the comparisons of their works. Around 150 pieces are gathered following a thematic path that uses the approach to emptiness as a means of analyzing the conceptual and formal tensions upon which their respective productions are based.
“Calder-Picasso”
February 19 – August 25, 2019
This exhibition was jointly organized by the Calder Foundation and the Fundación Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso para el Arte. It was on display at the Museo Picasso Málaga in the autumn of 2019.
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Summary