Pablo Picasso's Original Vollard Prints on View at LewAllen Modern

Written by Nickalou Orantes Saturday, 28 April 2012 22:55

Santa Fe, NM.— The LewAllen Modern gallery is pleased to announce its upcoming exhibition, "Pablo Picasso: Selections from La Suite Vollard", on view at the gallery’s Railyard venue from June 10th through July 24th. This rigorously curated presentation of twenty-three original etchings and aquatints by one of Modernism’s greatest agitators draws predominantly from the celebrated La Suite Vollard — a salient element of Picasso’s (1881-1973) artistic achievement that is now recognized as one of the finest groups of prints produced in the 20th century.

The history of the suite revolves around several key figures in the history of Modern Art. The body of work takes its name from its publisher, Ambroise Vollard (1866-1939), perhaps the most influential Parisian dealer and critic of his time, who had already championed the art of Paul Cézanne, Aristide Maillol, Paul Gauguin, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Georges Rouault, and Vincent Van Gogh prior to organizing Picasso’s inaugural Parisian exhibition in 1901. When Picasso had sought to purchase from Vollard several paintings by Renoir — an artist whom Vollard represented and regarding whom he had published a significant monograph — the dealer had suggested an exchange of these works for one hundred original prints by Picasso. Faithful to his agreement, the artist produced the resulting suite between between 1930 and 1937 and had personally edited its selection to appeal to Vollard's forward-looking sensibilities.

By the end of World War I, Picasso’s art had evolved through his Blue, Rose, Analytic Cubism, and Synthetic Cubism periods. He had pursued Cubism to its limits and was searching to define a novel artistic direction. In 1917, Picasso accompanied Jean Cocteau to Rome to design scenery and costumes for the ballet Parade, bringing him into focused contact with the classical forms that would inspire and revivify his practice. Rooted in this experience, he developed a new style in which he synthesized his revolutionary past achievements with an over neoclassicism, culminating in the Suite Vollard.

A considerable undertaking even for an artist of Picasso’s technical and creative capacities, the artist devided the Suite Vollard divided into principal five themes: Battle of Love; Sculptor’s Studio; Rembrandt; The Minotaur; and The Blind Minotaur, as well as a further twenty-seven prints of disparate themes. Twenty of the works on view in the present exhibition represent the Sculptor’s Studio theme within the suite. They explore the relationship between artist, model, sculpture, and the act of creation itself—offering rare insights into the working process of an often inscrutable artist.

In the Sculptor’s Studio series, Picasso presents images that depict artists and models considering sculptures, thus generating art from pictures of its spectatorship. By directly addressing the act of viewing and placing his audience’s perspective within the studio, the artist transcends the prevailing segregation of the audience from the active development of art’s meanings. Migrating the seemingly fixed forms of antiquity into the context of Modernism’s conceptual and aesthetic prerogatives, Picasso’s canny co-option of Neoclassicism exalted the lived experience of its audience no less than it heroized the sculpted figures depicted. That Picasso executed most of this democratically-spirited series between 1933 and 1934 speaks to his acute sensitivity to the ominous political climate in Europe prefiguring the single most powerful expression of modernity’s struggle against the horrors of war: Guernica (1937).

Accompanying the work from the Suite Vollard are three works presented here upon one of the rare occasions that they have been available for public exhibition. The etching Baigneuses sur la Plage III consists of a positive and negative impression—the former an edition of twelve and the latter of only four. En la Taberna. Pecheurs Catalans en bordée is from a special edition of 108, half of which are printed in a highly unusuaul  brown-black coloration. The richly modulated aquatint Venus et l’amour, d’apres Cranach represents one of fifteen artist proofs; its medium manifests one of printmaking’s most complex, sensitive, and time-consuming procedures—producing very few high-quality impressions with the exquisite tonal effects easily perceived in the example on view. As proofs and products of experimentation, these images join the Sculptor’s Studio series to provide additional insight into Picasso’s sensibilities and techniques.


Prized by contemporary curators, selections from the Suite Vollard have been exhibited within several of the world’s most esteemed public collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the National Gallery, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, and the Norton Simon Museum.

LewAllen Galleries is one of the oldest and largest galleries of leading contemporary and modern art outside of New York City. Exhibiting in three locations, LewAllen is widely respected as one of the leading fine art venues in Santa Fe, New Mexico, the nation's second largest art market. Operating for more than 35 years on Palace Avenue near the New Mexico Museum of Art, the gallery maintains a robust show schedule each year in its 11,000 square feet of museum-like exhibition space. It has recently completed a stunning 14,000 square foot, architecturally forward new gallery building in the Santa Fe Railyard Arts District. LewAllen also operates a satellite gallery at the luxurious Encantado Resort by Auberge in Tesuque, north of the City of Santa Fe.

The Contemporary Division features work in a variety of media and its artists represent many schools of contemporary art, including Realist, Pop, Abstract, Color Field, Minimalist, Op, Geometric Abstraction and Expressionist. Its internationally diverse roster includes such noted artists as Audrey Flack, Woody Gwyn, Judy Chicago, John Fincher, Emily Mason, Bernard Chaet, Robert Natkin, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Forrest Moses, Hiroshi Yamano, Janet Fish, Ed Mieczkowski and Bill Barrett, among others. During its history, the gallery has also presented the work of such historically notable artists as Fritz Scholder, Georgia O'Keeffe, Robert Colescott, Luis Jimenez, Ida Kohlmeyer, Thornton Dial, Donald Roller Wilson and Larry Rivers, among many others.

The Modern Division is fortunate to represent fine collections, museums, and individuals in assisting placement in the secondary market for American and European Modernist works of distinction and unusual quality. The Department employs professional art historical resources and prides itself on diligence regarding provenance and authentication as well as unusual levels of research, and curatorial attention dedicated to presenting museum-level exhibitions of signal works of the Modern era. Representative works of uncustomary importance to major international collections include those by such Modern masters as Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Renoir, Marc Chagall, Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, Mark Rothko and Amedeo Modigliani, among numerous others.

With collectors from around the world, the gallery utilizes state-of-the-art technology, the Internet and other forms of distance communication in helping clients build important collections. The gallery has a large following among corporations, public art spaces, museums and prominent private collectors in whose collections the works of its represented artists appear. Visit the gallery's website at ... http://www.lewallengalleries.com

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