Preview of The Barnes Foundation’s Picasso’s Great War Exhibit Opening February 21

By Lou Perri

Explore Philly enjoys the many art museums Philadelphia has to offer and last Tuesday, February 16th, a member of the staff visited The Barnes Foundation for a new Picasso exhibit—Picasso: The Great War, Experimentation and Change. The exhibit will open to the public on February 21st and continue until May 9th.

Simonetta Fraquelli and Bernard Ruiz-Picasso — Simonetta Fraquelli, exhibition curator and specialist in early twentieth-century European art, and Picasso’s grandson Bernard Ruiz-Picasso, pose for Explore Philly.

Thom Collins, Executive Director and President of the Barnes Foundation

Members of the media view gallery paintings.

Cubism Before the War wall description at the Picasso Exhibit.

Ham, Glass, Bottle of Vieux Marc, Paper c. 1914

Still Life with a Bottle, Playing Cards, and a Wineglass on a Table 1914

Wall description of prvious painting. — Wall description of previous painting.

Still Life with Compote and Glass 1914-1915

Wall description of the previous painting.

Media representatives in the film rom at the exhibit. — Media representatives in the film roam at the exhibit.

A media representative rests during the tour.

Seated Man With Pipe 1916 Seated Man 1915-1916 Man With a Guitar 1915-1916 — Seated Man With Pipe 1916 / Seated Man 1915-1916 / Man With a Guitar 1915-1916

Wall descriptions of the previous paintings.

Reproduction of costumes for a ballet in Bordeaux.

Costume for the Chinese Conjurer, 1917, Silk satin fabric with silver tissue.

Matthew Pruden (left) and Timothy Gierschick, Jr. (right), Barnes Foundation preparators who hanged the exhibit paintings.

Picasso: The Great War, Experimentation and Change exhibition catalogue

Picasso: The Great War, Experimentation and Change, organized in partnership with the Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, and premiering at the Barnes Foundation (February 21 through May 9, 2016) examines the dramatic fluctuations in Picasso’s style during the period surrounding the First World War, from 1912 to 1924.

The show brings together some 50 works by the artist from major American and European museums and private collections, including paintings, drawings, watercolors, and costumes designed for the avant-garde ballet, Parade, as well as several pieces by his friends and contemporaries.

Unlike other members of the Parisian avant-garde, Picasso never directly addressed the First World War as a subject in his art. Instead, he began experimenting with naturalistic representation, turning out classical figure drawings that outraged many of his avant-garde colleagues—this was quite a shift from the radical cubist approach he had been developing since 1907.

Picasso did not give up cubism, however. Instead, he shuttled back and forth between the two different styles for over a decade, breaking forms apart and making them whole again. Exhibition curator Simonetta Fraquelli says, “What becomes evident when looking at Picasso’s work during this period is that his two artistic styles—cubism and neoclassicism—are not antithetical; on the contrary, each informs the other, to the degree that the metamorphosis from one style to the other is so natural for the artist that occasionally they occur in the same works of art.”

Book tickets to the exhibit
Call 215-278-7200 (7 days a week – 10 am and 4 pm daily)
Address:
2025 Benjamin Franklin Parkway
Philadelphia, PA 19130