Calder and Picasso
Both artists participated jointly in the Spanish Pavilion at the 1937 Paris International Exposition. Visitors entered the building on the ground floor, where the lectures, events, and meetings were held. That was the space where Picasso’s Guernica interacted with Alexander Calder’s Mercury Fountain. However, the two artists had already met before, having been introduced to each other in 1931. Calder produced abstract mobiles and was interested in Picasso’s wire sculptures. Therefore, the painter is at the root of so-called “transparent” sculpture, generated by “drawing in space.” Each in his own way, the two artists opened up new perspectives, seeking a new gesture and a different relationship to space and to the viewer within it, another way of considering materials in terms of mass, weight, and resistance, pondering their lightness or heaviness.
Exploring figurative and abstract themes, the Calder-Picasso exhibition examines the expression of nonspace in the works of both these artists, in their resonances, and in their differences. The content focuses on the connection between these two men, their features in common, and their artistic collaborations. Close to 150 pieces have been gathered and displayed following a thematic itinerary.
The exhibition leaves viewers with the ineffable feeling of having touched masses of air that are tense yet balanced, at once solid and fragile, in a surge of silent elegance. The beauty of these forms attracts the eye. It would be a mistake to associate Calder and Picasso indiscriminately despite the different sense of amazement they convey through their respective quests, much though both may explore the importance of vectors and centers of gravity. Accordingly, the exhibition’s curators have incisively and passionately analyzed the visual sparring between two personalities with a sharp eye. We feel that they are imbued with a deep desire to address the notions of balance, void, and space with astonishing virtuosity, with a sovereign artistic approach, a poetic ebb and flow like a moment of grace suspended in a breath of air. Calder seeks an innovative dynamic, captures the void by following his intellectual inquisitiveness, invoking invisible forces that push the boundaries of nature or what he referred to as “grandeur immense”. The man who stated “My whole theory of art is the disparity that exists between form, masses and movement” approaches that movement in a most original way. Picasso’s perspective is more intimate, breaking down all the boundaries between the artist and the subject. Picasso seeks to capture the essence, to suggest. Both men appear to sculpt or paint to better show emptiness and absence. Their artistic gestures, subtly displayed in the Musée Picasso’s spaces, are part of an intense personal quest, perfectly transcribed as the journey unfolds.
Calder-Picasso
February 19 – August 25, 2019 - Musée National Picasso - Paris
The exhibition is organized in partnership with the Calder Foundation and the Fundación Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso para el Arte. It will be shown at the Museo Picasso Málaga in the autumn of 2019.
2 / 3
Summary