Albright-Knox Art Gallery To Show Modern Masters

Written by Bernard Gibson Monday, 12 September 2011 22:13

BUFFALO, NY.- The work of four modernist masters and early twentieth-century pioneers of abstraction: — Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Fernand Léger, and Sonia Delaunay — are explored in a new exhibition which opened at the The Albright-Knox Art Gallery, on January 21, 2011. The exhibition, organized by Albright-Knox Curator Heather Pesanti and Curatorial Assistant Ilana Chlebowski and drawn from the Gallery’s Collection, features more than seventy objects in a variety of media, including paintings, sculptures, and works on paper, spanning decades of each artist’s career. By following the transitions and shifts of these four masters’ works from one style or movement to the next, viewers have the opportunity to explore the creative development of each of the artists, and forge connections between them.

This exhibition also reveals the parallel histories of four artists: contemporaries who were experimenting, and, as a result, revolutionizing the world of modern art. Greater context and understanding is brought to the works of these four artists as their tangential paths progress and at times even intersect, most notably when Braque and Picasso joined forces to revolutionize the arts with their invention of Cubism. Meanwhile, Delaunay’s bright colors and geometric forms presaged geometric abstraction and Léger’s cylindrical forms interpreted the mechanical age.

Artists in Depth: Picasso, Braque, Léger, Delaunay is the first in a new series of ongoing exhibitions drawn from the Albright-Knox’s Collection focusing on important artists whose works the Gallery has acquired in depth. This and other exhibitions in the “Artists in Depth” series will explore the collecting history of the Albright-Knox, as the Gallery’s past leadership endeavored not only to collect well-known masterworks by these artists but to acquire representative examples from different phases of their careers, offering greater breadth and scope.

For example, in this first iteration of “Artists in Depth,” Picasso’s iconic La Toilette, 1906, can be viewed and considered alongside lesser-known but equally important works that show the progression of Cubism, such as Nude Figure, 1909 –10, which epitomizes Picasso’s most fully realized Cubist style, and Harlequin (Project for a Monument), 1935, which continues the theme begun in the artist’s Blue and Rose periods but has the quality of his Cubist style.

When Pablo Picasso moved to Paris in 1904, he rented a studio in the bohemian neighborhood of Montparnasse. The building was called the Bateau Lavoir—it was spare and rough, but inexpensive. One day in the fall of 1904 when he was getting water from the single faucet in the basement, he met a young woman named Fernande Olivier. Even though they were only together until 1912, more than fifty years later she recalled that for some time she could not face what she called the fire in his eyes.

Fernande was the model for La Toilette, which reflects Picasso's view of the two different sides of her personality. One of the figures is nude and standing comfortably in a very open pose looking in a mirror, which implies vanity, while her more modest counterpart is fully clothed and standing quietly in profile holding the mirror. The figure on the left is represented in pinkish tones, associated with warmth, while the other is dressed primarily in cool blues.

The two figures also represent different influences on Picasso's painting at the time. The nude figure, both in pose and body type, reflects ancient Roman sculpture, which was often idealized. The other figure refers more to ancient Egyptian tomb painting, both in her pose and in the fact that she is clothed. The shallow space the figures inhabit reflect both Roman and Egyptian cultures.

Visit The Albright-Knox Art Gallery at : http://www.albrightknox.org/

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