NASHER SCULPTURE CENTER PRESENTS PABLO PICASSO EXHIBITION FROM THE NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART, WASHINGTON, D.C.
2/14/2004 12:00:00 AM
The Nasher Sculpture Center, which opened in Dallas in October 2003, will commence its special exhibitions program with Picasso: The Cubist Portraits of Fernande Olivier, on view at the Center from February 14 through May 9, 2004. Organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., the exhibition features approximately 25 works in a range of media, including painting, drawing, and sculpture. A highlight of the exhibition is the 1909 Head of a Woman (Fernande), an important plaster working model in the Raymond and Patsy Nasher Collection. Taken together, the works present a rare opportunity to examine a critical theme in Picasso’s early work and its relationship to the evolution of his Cubist style.
The Nasher Sculpture Center, a new institution dedicated to the presentation of modern and contemporary sculpture, serves as a public home for the Raymond and Patsy Nasher Collection, one of the foremost collections of twentieth-century sculpture in the world. The Center is distinguished by a critically-acclaimed facility designed by Renzo Piano, specifically conceived for the indoor and outdoor display of sculpture.
As the Nasher Sculpture Center develops its reputation for scholarship and public programming, it is essential that we present groundbreaking exhibitions with important catalogues,” said Director Steven Nash. “Picasso and the upcoming Medardo Rosso exhibitions, and collaborations with esteemed institutions like the National Gallery of Art and Harvard Art Museums, launch us firmly toward these goals. We look forward to continuing to bring important exhibitions to audiences in the Dallas and Fort Worth region."
During 1909-10, Picasso was devoted to representing one subject—his companion, Fernande Olivier. An artist’s model and aspiring painter, Olivier was Picasso’s lover during the early years of the twentieth century. The two spent much of 1909 in the Spanish mountain town of Horta de Ebro, where Picasso worked intensely on his now famous series of portraits. His singular commitment to representing just one subject in such depth was an effort virtually unprecedented in the history of portraiture.
Renowned as a painter, Picasso was also one of the twentieth century’s most innovative and prolific sculptors, and was influential in the development of modern sculptural thought. Three versions of the sculpture Head of a Woman (Fernande) (1909), which Picasso produced immediately upon his return to Paris from Horta de Ebro, are brought together in the exhibition, including an important plaster working model in the Nasher Collection and an early bronze recently acquired by the National Gallery of Art. Marking his first formal experimentation with sculpture, this period in his career represents the origins of Picasso’s lifelong devotion to the medium, which created a vital dialogue between his two- and three-dimensional forms.
"The goal of the Nasher Sculpture Center is to continually find new ways for the public and scholars to view and appreciate sculpture. An exceptional piece in the Collection, Head of a Woman has been presented alongside works from the major sculptural movements of the century,” said Raymond Nasher, founder and chairman of the Nasher Sculpture Center. “We are thrilled to collaborate with the National Gallery to present this important work in a new light—the context of Picasso’s early explorations of Cubist sculpture in a seminal year of his artistic development."
Raymond and Patsy Nasher acquired Head of a Woman (Fernande) in 1987. With 14 works by Picasso, including seven sculptures, the Nasher Collection is one of the most important representations of the artist’s work as a sculptor outside of the Picasso Museum in Paris. Other works of sculpture by Picasso in the Nasher Collection include the recently acquired Head of a Woman (1958), an outdoor concrete and gravel sculpture that stands 10 feet tall; one of the so-called
Boisgeloup heads in bronze from 1931; the bronze Pregnant Woman (1950/59); Faune assis (1951); Flowers in a Vase (1951-53), a plaster and metal piece; and Head of a Woman, also called Head of Jacqueline, a work in painted sheet metal (1957).
Picasso: The Cubist Portraits of Fernande Olivier is organized by Jeffrey Weiss, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. The exhibition catalogue features three groundbreaking essays: Kathryn Tuma of The Drawing Center in New York re-examines ‘cézannisme’, the influence of Cézanne on Cubism; Weiss focuses on the formal and allegorical significance of melancholy in the Fernande series; and Valerie Fletcher, Curator of Sculpture at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., presents the first rigorous technical essay about the sculpture Head of a Woman (Fernande), including a study of its origins and its versions in plaster and bronze.
The Raymond and Patsy Nasher Collection
Developed over more than five decades, Raymond Nasher and his late wife Patsy began collecting art in 1950 and together formed one of the finest collections of 20th-century sculpture in the world. The Nasher Collection includes masterpieces by Calder, de Kooning, di Suvero, Giacometti, Hepworth, Kelly, Matisse, Miró, Moore, Picasso, Rodin, and Serra, among many others, and continues to grow and evolve.
About the Nasher Sculpture Center
The Nasher Sculpture Center is open Tuesday through Sunday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. and on Thursday from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Admission is $10 for adults, $7 for seniors, $5 for students, and free for members and children under 12. The price of admission includes an audio tour.