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11/6/2005

The Surrealist Picasso

Fondation Beyeler, Basel

1924-39

Curated by Anne Baldassari

In cooperation with the Musée national Picasso, Paris, the Fondation Beyeler is presenting the first comprehensive exhibition ever devoted to Picasso's surrealist years, 1924-34. During this period the artist maintained close contacts with the Surrealist movement, which was called into being by André Breton in 1924. Picasso's art of these years attests to this involvement in many and various respects. Still, Picasso never considered himself a true member of Breton's movement, always maintaining his independence even during his surrealism-influenced years. There was one demand of Breton's that Picasso thought went too far - the desire to make the unconscious mind the sole wellspring of artistic activity. Picasso did not believe in such "automatic" painting or drawing, and insisted on his own approach to the surreal, making sure, as he said, "not to lose sight of nature." His concern was with "a deeper similarity, which is more real than reality and thus attains to the surreal."

The resulting, very personal art is extremely compelling and of amazing variety: acrobats dancing across the picture plane as if in a dream, monstrous embraces on the beach, unprecedented aesthetic variations on the crucifixion, but also the visionary depictions of Marie-Thérèse Walter, which were soon increasingly supplanted by the so different portrayals of Dora Maar.

Also included in the exhibition are pre-surrealist works from the Cubist period and major works from the years 1935-39 and thereafter, in which Picasso's surrealism began to take on a new form in which political engagement was combined with poetic revolution. Exhibition curator is Anne Baldassari, conservator at the Musée Picasso in Paris.

Image: Le Baiser, 1925 (Été)
Oil on canvas, 130,5 x 97,7 cm, Musée Picasso, Paris
Photo: RMN © Jean-Gilles Berizzi
© 2005, ProLitteris, Zurich

“The Surrealist Picasso” will be accompanied by a comprehensive catalogue, edited by the Fondation Beyeler under the supervision of the exhibition curator, Anne Baldassari, and published by Flammarion, Paris. The catalogue consists of two sections.

The first, issued for the exhibition opening, is a basic catalogue in three languages (German/French/English). It contains a fundamental text by Anne Baldassari and a newly compiled, extensive chronology of Picasso’s surrealist phase. The volume comprises 256 pages with 223 full-color illustrations, and is priced at CHF 49.

Fondation Beyeler
Baselstrasse 101, CH-4125 Riehen / Basel
Opening hours
Museum daily 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., on Wednesdays 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.

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