Tag: pablo picasso

Postcard from Zaragoza, Spain: Escalating focus on modern art

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Above: Escalators in the Pablo Serrano Instituto Aragones de Arte y Cultura Contemporaneous

Science and humanism must be an embrace and not a wall that separates reason and feeling.”

Pablo Serrano (1908-1985)

Born in Crivillen in Teruel, a province of Aragon Spain, Pablo Serrano must have felt his calling toward art at a young age. When he was 14 years old, he left home to begin eight years of study in sculpture in Barcelona. At age 22, he packed his bags and moved to Montevideo, Uruguay.

Despite his distance from Spain, the abstract sculptor’s influence rose as a major force in the Spanish avant-garde movement. Known as an expressionist, he interjected his subjective perspective in his work instead of feeling compelled to accurately replicate nature or his subjects. Serrano returned to Spain in 1957, continuing to exhibit internationally and often working on major public art commissions, including a sculpture of King Juan Carlos of Spain unfinished at the time of his death.

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Postcard from Malaga, Spain: Bits glimpsed in a final few museums

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Banner on Palacio Episcopal promoting Ars Malaga exhibition of polychrome sculpture by Pedro de Mena (1628-1688)

Combining a few images from some remaining museums representing the diversity of the city’s offerings from a private 18th-century house museum containing a private Coleccion del Vidrio y Cristal to the only four-year-old impressive Coleccion del Museo Ruso showcasing works on loan from St. Petersburg in a former tobacco factory.

Coleccion Museo Ruso
Ars Malaga, Palacio Episcopal
Museo del Vidrio y Crystal
Portrait of Z.D.R., Ilya Mashkov, 1927, Coleccion Museo Ruso
Ars Malaga, Palacio Episcopal
“Woman Combing Her Hair,” 18th century, Coleccion Museo Ruso
Museo del Vidrio y Crystal
Portrait of Catherine II, Dmitri Levitski, 1782, Coleccion Museo Ruso
Museo del Vidrio y Crystal
Ifergan Collection, Islam
Santa Paraskeva Piatnitsa, 17th century, Coleccion Museo Ruso
Vera Ivanovna Zhukova, 1890, Coleccion Museo Ruso
Coleccion Museo Ruso
Gift Shop, Coleccion Museo Ruso
former tobacco factory housing Coleccion Museo Ruso
Gift Shop, Coleccion Museo Ruso
Coleccion Museo Ruso
Ars Malaga, Palacio Episcopal
Museo del Vidrio y Crystal
Ifergan Collection, Egypt
Coleccion Museo Ruso
Museo del Vidrio y Crystal
Coleccion Museo Ruso
Coleccion Museo Ruso
Ars Malaga, Palacio Episcopal

And there are museums with exhibits where no photographs were allowed. Several of these are dedicated to Malaga’s favorite son, Pablo Picasso (1881-1973).

From a white father and a small glass of water of Andalusian life was I born. Born from a mother, daughter of a daughter aged fifteen from the district of Percheles in Malaga, that beautiful bull that engendered my forehead crowned with jasmines.

Pablo Picasso, 1936

He was born in a home on Plaza Merced, now a house museum, Museo Casa Natal. Although the last time Picasso was known to visit the city of his birth was in 1901, purportedly he always held affection for Malaga. Receiving a commitment from Andalusian authorities to construct a museum, a daughter-in-law and grandson of Picasso donated work that makes up the core of the collection of the Fundacion Museo Picasso Malaga in 2009. The works are now housed in the Palacio de los Condes de Buenavista, a Renaissance building with Mudejar elements, and adjacent new construction.

The Olga Picasso exhibition there, which closed in June, was among my favorites of the trip. The exhibition pairs period paintings by Pablo Picasso paired with letters and personal photographs a grandson found in Olga’s portmanteau.

Olga Khokhlova (1891-1955) was born in the Ukraine but left when she joined the Ballets Russes under the direction of Sergei Diaghilev (1872-1929). Pablo Picasso was working on the décor and costumes for one of the ballet productions when he encountered the young dancer in Rome in 1917. They married in Paris in 1918 and had one child, Paul.

In the first years of their marriage, Olga often served as the model for his work. His increasingly unflattering depictions of her reflected the deterioration of their relationship. And, by 1927, Picasso had a new muse attract his interest, Marie-Therese Walter (1909-1977).

Picasso’s first marriage resulted in a separation in 1935, but the couple never divorced. Olga continued to follow him around with Paul in tow and wrote letters to her estranged husband almost daily. All unanswered.

 

 

Postcard from Malaga, Spain: Perusing 2,000 years of art

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“Dying Moments: Kicking a Man When He’s Down,” Bernardo Ferrandiz y Badenes (1835-1885), 1881

From Museum of Malaga label: This allegorical composition alludes to an episode in the artist’s life. A man of choleric temperament, he had a run-in with a fellow Academy member… which resulted in Ferrandiz being tried and sent to prison. Deeply shaken by this event, which led to his removal from the post of director of the San Telmo Fine Art School and social and personal disgrace, the once-haughty artist depicted himself as the skeleton of a cat. Only then, when the feline is “down,” so to speak, does the weakest of its sworn enemies, the mouse, dare to scurry among its remains.

Pondered how to pick a piece of art to represent a museum’s enormous collection…. Not sure why this painting by the man regarded as a founder of the Malaga School of painting was nominated, except Day of the Dead has been on my mind.

The Mister spied the painting first, perhaps drawn by the unusual printing painted directly on the frame. Somewhat illiterate in Spanish (understatement), I am label dependent. But what a great personal story – a tale of the politics of art – lurks within that frame.

The Museum of Malaga occupies the Palacio de la Aduana. The former customs house was commissioned by King Charles III (1716-1788) in 1787 in recognition of Malaga’s major role as a maritime trading center.

Two collections, one of fine arts and one of archaeology, were merged to become the Malaga Museum of Art and moved into the almost 200,000 square-foot neoclassical building in 2016. A lot to wander through and absorb, but here’s an abbreviated armchair tour.

mosaic floor “Birth of Venus,” Cartama, 2nd century
Mudejar ceiling corbel from the Convent of La Merced, 16th century
detail of mosaic floor “Birth of Venus,” Cartama, 2nd century
“The Saltimbanques/Acrobats,” Jose Suarez Peregrin, 1932
detail of “The Saltimbanques/Acrobats,” Jose Suarez Peregrin, 1932
detail of mosaic floor “Birth of Venus,” Cartama, 2nd century
marble female head with diadem, Cordoba, 1st century
detail of “Innoculation of the Children,” Enrique Borras y Abella, 1900
detail of mosaic floor “Birth of Venus,” Cartama, 2nd century
“Anatomy of the Heart: And She Had a Heart,” Enrique Simonet y Lombardo, 1890
colossal votive foot, Sevilla, 2nd century
Pitcher, Pablo Ruiz Picasso, 1954
baptismal font produced by a Triana pottery in Sevilla, 15th century
detail of “Anatomy of the Heart: And She Had a Heart,” Enrique Simonet y Lombardo, 1890
palms outside the Museum of Malaga
“A Child’s Dream,” Jose Moreno Villa, 1932
Three Faces: Mujer de Picasso, Eve and me
“Gravures de Pablo Picasso,” 1947
marble torso of emperor clad in a breastplate with victories and deities Oceanus and Tellus, Cordoba, 2nd centry
“The Miracle of Santa Cecilda,” Jose Nogales Sevilla, 1892
“The Painter and His Model,” Jose Carlos Duran Jimenez, 1981
silver hoard of Cerro Colorado, 3rd-2nd century B.C.
pendant with intaglio of Egyptian goddess Sekhmet; gold, silver and carnelian; Malaga; 6th century B.C.
Mudejar ceiling corbel from the Convent of La Merced, 16th century

Loved the horse “volunteering” his serum to inoculate a child in the 1900 painting by Enrique Borras. But my particular favorite is Enrique Simonet’s 1890 painting of an autopsy – “Anatomy of the Heart: And She Had a Heart.” Alas, now she has none. Seems a screen-shot from a macabre film.