Displaying items by tag: guernica

ome 80 years after Pablo Picasso had settled in the upper levels of the Hôtel de Savoie, on 7 rue des Grands Augustins in Paris, the artist's Left Bank studio will be made accessible to the public again thanks to an initiative by his daughter, Maya Widmaier-Picasso.

It was here that Picasso created his dark masterpiece, Guernica, in 1936, at the start of the Spanish Civil War.

Pablo Picasso is best known for his paintings, bold works such as “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” and “Guernica” that profoundly influenced the course of modern art.

This fall, the Museum of Modern Art plans to showcase a less-celebrated aspect of Picasso’s output—his sculpture—with a major survey of three-dimensional works that spans the artist’s entire career.

Featuring around 150 pieces from major collections around the world, “Picasso Sculpture” will run from Sept. 14, 2015 to Feb. 7, 2016.

After a triumphant tour of Japan, then the United States and ending in Italy, the "Girl with a Pearl Earring" has returned home to the Mauritshuis royal picture gallery in The Hague. For ever. The museum, which reopened last month after two years' renovation work, will no longer allow Vermeer's masterpiece out. Officially the Mona Lisa of the North has been gated in order to please visitors to the Mauritshuis who only want to see that painting. Its fame has steadily increased since Tracy Chevalier published her novel in 1999 followed in 2004 by the film by Peter Webber starring Scarlett Johansson. Anyone wanting to see the portrait will have make the trip to the Dutch city.

"Girl with a Pearl Earring" thus joins the select band of art treasures that never see the outside world. Botticelli's "Birth of Venus" never leaves the Uffizi in Florence; "Las Meninas" by Velázquez stays put at the Prado in Madrid; Picasso's "Guernica" remains just down the road at the Reina Sofia museum; and his "Demoiselles d'Avignon" can only be seen at MoMA in New York.

Pablo Picasso’s Paris studio where he painted the iconic Guernica in 1937 is at the center of a legal battle. The cultural group The National Committee for Artistic Education (CNEA) has been using the historic loft as its headquarters since 2002 but a French court is considering evicting the committee.

Founded in 1966, CNEA promotes arts education in schools and was given the space by Paris’ Chambre des Huissiers de Justice. As property prices in the artsy Saint-Germain-des Prés soar, the Chambre could make a considerable profit from the loft.

Besides being Picasso’s home and studio from 1936 to 1955, No. 7 Rue Grands-Augustins was the setting of a Honore de Balzac short story, the first home of Jean-Louis Barrault’s theatre company and a popular meeting place for Jean-Paul Sartre, George Bataille and Jean Cocteau. CNEA has hosted over 700 events at the loft.

Pablo Picasso’s (1881-1973) granddaughter, Marina Picasso, has chosen Sotheby’s to sell two paintings by her grandfather from her personal collection. The sale will benefit children and adolescents in difficulty, a cause Marina Picasso is a major champion of. She has provided substantial funding and assistance to foundations in Vietnam, France, and Switzerland.

Marina Picasso’s collection was the subject of a traveling exhibition in the 1980s but this is the first time that any of her works have been offered for sale. The two paintings, which will be part of Sotheby’s Impressionist & Modern Art Sale in Paris on June 6, 2013, are Palette et Tete de Taureau (1938) and Femme Assise en Robe Grise (1943). The works echo the aesthetic implications of Picasso’s famed Guernica (1937), which captures the dark, somber tone of Picasso’s works from this period, the result of the horrors endured due to the Spanish Civil War.

Palette et Tete de Taureau is expected to bring $1.3 million-$1.9 million and Femme Assise en Robe Grise is expected to garner $3.2 million-$4.5 million.