Art review: Picasso. Retrats

What a pleasure to be presented with seven galleries of paintings, drawings and sculptures by Picasso that make you consider his work from a new perspective. Curator Elizabeth Cowling has tackled an enormous theme in Picasso’s oeuvre—his depiction of mostly recognisable human figures—while focusing on relatively few pieces (33 drawings, 24 paintings, six sculptures and a handful of engravings and photographs) that perfectly illustrate her thoughtful consideration of his portraiture. The exhibition was first shown last winter at London’s National Portrait Gallery.

Picasso was never commissioned to paint anyone’s portrait, but rather he chose to depict those in his immediate circle: his wives, his many lovers, his children, collectors, gallerists and several other famous artists pictured here such as Igor Stravinsky and Jean Cocteau. Because so many people came and went through Picasso’s life, it is a treat to see one corner of this exhibition devoted to a constant thread: his childhood Catalan friend Jaume Sabartés, who became his long-time secretary. Whether caught with his pants down as a caricature in a brothel scene, or re-invented with a ruffled Flemish collar, Sabartés shows up here as Picasso’s Sancho Panza in different guises between 1904 and 1957.

On view are a number of works rarely seen in public. Among these are an astonishingly contemporary-looking painting of his first wife Olga, from 1923, a moment that ushered in his Neo-classic period, as well as a Cubist portrait of Fernande from 1909-1910, on loan from the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.

A gallery devoted to ‘Color’ shows Picasso working in a circus-like palette appropriate to images of his toddler children, but more curious when applied to serious adults such as photographer Lee Miller or his by-then (1935) bitter wife Olga, who was about to separate from Picasso for good, but who would never divorce him.

Elsewhere we see Picasso bouncing among such wild swings of styles that it would be impossible for the uninitiated to accept that one person had created all of the works in the gallery. In one year (1938), for instance, he portrayed his eccentric lover Dora Maar with a spider-like line, but he muted the outline of the gentle Marie-Thérèse Walter so completely that she appears to be half-human, half-cloud. Gallerist Vollard is a series of soft smudges, but composer Stravinsky is a riot of sharp Cubist planes that open like a Spanish fan.

In the final gallery the curator explores the expatriate artist’s recurring Spanish themes through the use of pairings that are not immediately obvious, but Cowling weaves these threads from different eras together beautifully. Black-clad portraits of Françoise Gilot and Jacqueline Roque both recall enthroned Spanish nobility. Two painted sheet-metal portraits of Sylvette David from the Thirties are placed as comparisons to Picasso’s Velázquez studies from the Fifties. The exhibition ends with an Infanta from the museum’s ‘Las Meninas’ series, placed next to a similarly triangular composition of Picasso’s family (Françoise with young Paloma and Claude). Such thoughtful juxtapositions provide the viewer with insightful moments about the complex visual associations that were constantly at work inside Picasso’s head.

See here for details about the exhibition.