Pablo Picasso: Seated Harlequin (1923)
The Prado exhibits ten Picassos from the Kunstmuseum The Museo del Prado and the Kunstmuseum Basel, in collaboration with the Comunidad de Madrid, are presenting ten masterpieces by Pablo Picasso from the Kuntsmuseum Basel. From March to September, 2015.]]>
Source: Museo del Prado
These ten works by the Malaga-born painter, dated between 1906 and 1967, make up a small retrospective that will be displayed alongside some of the Prado’s masterpieces in the Central Gallery, which is considered the “backbone” of its permanent collection. This project is part of the Kunstmuseum Basel’s generous collaboration with the Museo del Prado and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, which is showing a broad selection of modern and contemporary works also from the Swiss museum while the latter is closed for its final stage of renovation work.
The ten Picassos include the first paintings brought to the Kunstmuseum Basel by its director Georg Schmidt – “Bread and Fruit Dish with Fruit on a Table” (1908–9), a key work from the painter’s pre-cubist phase; “Girls on the Banks of the Seine, after Courbet” (1950), a splendid reworking of the French master’s painting; and “Woman with Hat seated in Armchair” (1941–42), which were incorporated into the Swiss museum’s holdings in 1951, 1955 and 1967, respectively. They are joined by “The Aficionado” and “Woman with a Guitar”, paintings that were part of La Roche’s first gift to the museum in 1952.
“Two Sisters”, executed in Gósol at the beginning of the summer of 1906, and “Seated Harlequin” (1923), a portrait of his painter friend Jacinto Salvadó which will be shown outside the Swiss canton for the first time in the Prado exhibition, were deposited at the Kunstmuseum Basel by Rudolf Staechelin in 1947 and sold twenty years later by his son Peter. The acquisition of these works stemmed from an initiative of the citizens of Basel, who decided in a referendum, and was made possible by the participation of public institutions and private contributions. Picasso was touched by this unusual occurrence, which prompted him to give the city a large study and three paintings that can also be seen at the Prado during this exhibition: “Man, Woman and Child” of 1906 and “Venus and Love” and “The Couple”, both executed in 1967.
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The First Picasso – A Coruña 2015 – Museum of Fine Arts, A Coruña (exhibition, 2015)
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