75 th ANNITE m LIBRARY Museumo f ModernA rt archive "jaEasSaHZZ OFFICE COPY PLEASER ETUfWTO OFFICEO F KONRGE WHEELER I 0 »<(cid:149)»« Edited by Alired H. Barr, Jr. PICASSO 75th ANNIVERSARY EXHIBITION the museum of modern art, new york May 22—September 8, 1957 the art institute of Chicago October 29—December 8, 1957 Published by the Museum of Modern Art, New York A <£"l Frontispiece: Girl fFriting. 1934. Oil on canvas, 63% x 51^s. Florene and Samuel Marx, Chicago TRUSTEES OF THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, NEW YORK NELSON A. ROCKEFELLER, CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD; HENRY ALLEN MOE, VICE-CHAIRMAN; WILLIAM A. M. BURDEN, PRESIDENT, MRS. DAVID M. LEVY, VICE-PRESIDENT; ALFRED H. BARR, JR., MRS. ROBERT WOODS BLISS, STEPHEN C. CLARK, RALPH F. COLIN, MRS. W. MURRAY CRANE*, RENE D HARNONCOURT, MRS. EDSEL B. FORD, PHILIP L. GOODWIN, A. CONGER GOODYEAR, MRS. SIMON GUGGENHEIM*, WALLACE K. HARRISON, MRS. WALTER HOCHSCHILD, JAMES W. HUSTED*, MRS. ALBERT D. LASKER, MRS. HENRY R. LUCE, RANALD H. MACDONALD, MRS. G. MACCULLOCH MILLER, WILLIAM S. PALEY, MRS. BLISS PARKINSON, MRS. CHARLES S. PAYSON, DUNCAN PHILLIPS*, ANDREW CARNDUFF RITCHIE, DAVID ROCKEFELLER, MRS. JOHN D. ROCKE FELLER, 3RD, BEARDSLEY RUML*, PAUL J. SACHS*, JOHN L. SENIOR, JR., JAMES THRALL SOBY, EDWARD M. M. WARBURG, MONROE WHEELER, JOHN HAY WHITNEY *HONORARY TRUSTEE FOR LIFE TRUSTEES OF THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO EVERETT D. GRAFF, PRESIDENT; PERCY B. ECKHART, VICE-PRESIDENT; LESTER ARMOUR, VICE- PRESIDENT; FRANK B. HUBACHEK, VICE-PRESIDENT; HOMER J. LIVINGSTON, TREASURER; JAMES W. ALSDORF, CUSHMAN B. BISSELL, WILLIAM MCCORMICK BLAIR, MRS. LEIGH B. BLOCK, LEIGH B. BLOCK, AVERY BRUNDAGE, MARSHALL FIELD, JR., EARLE LUDGIN, SAMUEL A. MARX, BROOKS MCCORMICK, FOWLER MCCORMICK, ANDREW MCNALLY III, WALTER P. PAEPCKE, DANIEL CATTON RICH, EDWARD BYRON SMITH, ARTHUR M. WOOD, FRANK H. WOODS, GEORGE B. YOUNG HONORARY TRUSTEES ROBERT ALLERTON, HONORARY PRESIDENT; RUSSELL TYSON, HONORARY VICE-PRESIDENT; MRS. TIFFANY BLAKE, HAROLD H. SWIFT EX OFFICIO RICHARD J. DALEY, MAYOR OF THE CITY OF CHICAGO; CARL H. CHATTERS, COMPTROLLER OF THE CITY OF CHICAGO; JAMES H. GATELY, PRESIDENT, CHICAGO PARK DISTRICT; LE ROY WOOD LAND, TREASURER, CHICAGO PARK DISTRICT Copyright 1957. The Museum of Modern Art. Printed in the United States of America PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Picasso was seventy-five years old last October. This exhibition, organized by the Museum of Modern Art with the support of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Phila delphia Museum of Art, contributes to the celebration of his anniversary. The exhibition was originally planned to show Picasso's art since his Guernica mural of 1937. It would thus simply have supplemented the retrospective Picasso show of 1939. However, since 1939 a whole new generation has come to maturity. For its sake and to make possible a comparative study of Picasso's art throughout his prodigious career, the scope of the exhibition has been extended to include some sixty years of work. Though the period covered is half again as long, the present survey is not so syste matically comprehensive as that of 1939. For lack of space, certain media, notably prints and ceramics, have been entirely omitted. This has made room for the largest showing in America of Picasso's rather neglected sculpture and a generous number of drawings. Most of the important sculptures so far released by the artist, as well as many lesser works, are included. Had the many major pieces still in Picasso's possession been available (as was expected), the artist would, I believe, have been revealed as one of the great sculptors of our time. His brilliance and power as a draftsman are demon strated by the seventy drawings selected from American collections by William S. Lieberman. Picasso's American amateurs will find many well-known canvases in the exhibition. This was inevitable, since it seemed essential to include certain capital paintings no matter how familiar. Besides, in the novel context of unaccustomed and challenging neighbors, even the often-seen canvas may display unexpected qualities. Many paintings and drawings have never before been exhibited in America. Some in fact are almost unknown even to students of Picasso. For instance the Woman in Blue, page 16, was shown at the Madrid Bellas Artes exhibition of 1901 and may even be the first Picasso to enter a public museum, yet it languished for nearly fifty years almost forgotten and quite unpublished until recently. Painted perhaps in the same year, the Self Portrait, page 13, has, it appears, never before been reproduced. It was bought in 1911 from the Thannhauser Gallery, Munich, by Hugo von Hofmannsthal with royal ties from his libretto for Der Rosenkavalier. In 1907, while he was at work on Les Demoiselles (TAvignon, Picasso painted an elaborate and unique composition in full fauve color, The Harvesters, page 32, which he gave to his old friend, Sebastian Junyer, of Barcelona, where the painting remained until last year. The Jug and Bowl, page 32, Picasso gave to Matisse in 1907-08, repeating the gesture almost forty years later with a still life of 1944, page 93. Both are published here apparently for the first time. The exhibition welcomes four of the most notable cubist pictures to this country, the Girl with Mandolin , page 38, recently acquired by a New York collector, and three loans not seen here before, the Aficionado, from the Basle Museum, page 41, the Woman in an Armchair , page 45, and the Portrait of a Girl, page 46, the last lent by that ad mirable connoisseur of twentieth-century art, the Director of the National Museums of France. With these should be mentioned the exquisite oval still life, page 44, from the collection of the National Gallery of Norway. At the heart of the cubist section may be found a concentration of collages, pages 42-44, rivaled in number only by the neo-classic "miniatures" of the early 1920s, pages 54-55. By contrast with these two groups, the large number of portraits was quite un planned. The famous portrait of Sebastian Junyer, page 18; the youthful self portraits, pages 13, 17 and 29; the artist's early patrons, Leo and Gertrude Stein, page 29, Wilhelm Uhde, page 39, and Dr. Claribel Cone, page 54; two of his pioneer dealers, Daniel- Henry Kahnweiler, page 39, and Ambroise Vollard, page 48; Diaghilev, who commis sioned most of his ballet designs, page 48; the charming portrayals of his children, Paul, page 60, Maya, page 82, and Claude, page 98; the affectionate if vertiginous mask of his faithful friend and biographer, Jaime Sabartes, page 82; the formidable intensity of his little daughter Paloma at play, page 99; the witty bravura of the two portraits of Madame H.P., page 104, and the proud profile of Jacqueline Roque, page 110; all these images of friends offer evidence that, as in the past, the greatest portraits were painted by the greatest artists rather than by specialists. The largest number of works previously unseen in America date of course from the most recent third of Picasso's career, the period since Guernica. Besides the portraits reviewed above, one may take special note of the famous pair of still lifes with a bull's head, page 81, the large Serenade, lent by the Musee d'Art Moderne, the bitterly humor ous cycle of drawings, pages 106-107, the fifteen variations on a theme by Delacroix, pages 9 and 108-109, the little view of Vallauris with smoke pouring from its ceramic furnaces, page 97, and, dating from last year, the large seated figures and studio in teriors, pages 110-114, works which bear witness to the sustained invention and vitality of the artist now in his 75th year, the man who by a coincidence of anniversaries, can look back exactly 20 years to his Guernica and 50 years to Les Demoiselles d?Avignon. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The recent triumphal procession of large Picasso retrospective exhibitions began in the museums of Rome and Milan in 1953, followed by Lyons and Sao Paulo in 1954, and the series of 75th birthday exhibitions in Paris and Munich in 1955, Cologne, Hamburg, Moscow and Oslo in 1956. The consequent and very natural exhaustion of lenders (not to mention the works of art!) have added to the already very great sense