Panama on Monday opened an exhibition of some 40 lithographs by Pablo Picasso as part of the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Spanish artist’s death.
The exhibition “Aún sorprendo” (I still surprise), with an original collection by Picasso (Málaga, 1881 – Mougins, France, 1973) on loan from the Universidad Europea del Atlántico/Fundación Universitaria Iberoamericana (Funiber), will be exhibited for two months at the Cultural Center of Spain in the old town of Panama City.
Three complete series of lithographs make up the show: “The Blues of Barcelona” from the artist’s blue period; “Genevieve” – paper drawings of his secret lover, the French philanthropist and poet Genoveva Laporte, and “Dancers” – copper engravings of Picasso’s relationship with dance, as well as two preparatory drawings of the “Women of Algiers.”
This collection, curated by the director of the Cultural Work of Funiber, Federico Fernández, covers the years 1899-1955.
In a video that is projected in the exhibition, Fernández points out that the collection “is an example of that variety, of that diversity that makes Picasso, whether we like it or not, still surprise.”
“Picasso was an extraordinary man and an extraordinary artist, and when an extraordinary man combines with an extraordinary artist, we are sure that this man will be immortal,” Gregorio Urriola, Funiber’s representative in Panama, told EFE.
Urriola invited Panama’s public to go see “this synthesis, because this is an exhibition that summarizes very important periods in Picasso’s evolution” and his work.
He explained that the reason and essence of this exhibition is to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Picasso’s death and his “ascent to the heaven of the arts” as “one of the greats of universal painting of all time.”
He stressed that Picasso is also a “legend” because he “was always renewing himself,” and in this sense he quoted a phrase by the artist: “Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.”
“He was tireless. In the early stages, in the blue, Picasso produced three, four magnificent paintings a day to survive. He inaugurated cubism, renewed surrealism, and then until his death, searching and imagining new paths,” he said.
The show is one of 50 exhibitions and activities in various countries held as part of the so-called Picasso Year, for which the governments of Spain and France created a binational commission to commemorate the 50th anniversary of his death, the Spanish ambassador to Panama Guzmán Palacios told EFE.
In addition to the national commission that Spain set up for this event, it was decided to create a binational commission taking into account “that powerful link between Pablo Picasso and France, where the artist not only lived a part of his artistic career, but even came to die there.”
After living in Barcelona and Madrid, where he entered the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando, in 1904 Picasso settled in Paris and lived through his “blue period.”
In his next stage, the “pink period,” he painted pictures such as “Harlequin’s Family,” then 1906 was the year of the “great transformation” – he began “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon,” considered the first cubist work and with which he revolutionized art.
Upon his death without a will, the judicial inventory encrypted his works as follows: he owned 1,876 paintings, 1,355 sculptures, 7,089 drawings, 25,388 engravings, 2,880 ceramics, and 149 notebooks for a total of 4,659 works.