Picasso and Rivera: Conversations Across Time

Influenced by the forms, myths, and structures of the arts of antiquity, artists Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) and Diego Rivera (1886-1957) displayed artistic trajectories both in Europe and Latin America.
 

The exhibit Picasso and Rivera: Conversations Across Time, presented by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City, weaves together distant geographies and worlds by juxtaposing more than 100 paintings and prints by Picasso and Rivera along with dozens of ancient Greco-Roman, Etruscan, Iberian, and Mesoamerican objects presented in five thematic sections.

 

On view at The Academy section is Picasso and Rivera’s neoclassical training as child prodigies in their respective national academies, Picasso in Spain and Rivera in Mexico.

The artists' Cubist works created while in Paris between 1908 and 1916, are on display in the Cubism and Paris gallery.

Included are Picasso’s The Poet (Le poète) (1912) and Rivera’s Sailor at Lunch (Marinero almorzando) (1914).

Also on view here is Picasso's Guitar, Gas-Jet and Bottle (1913) in which Picasso used a range of media and techniques. 

For the first time shown publicly by the Picasso Family Collection is Still Life with Bottle of Anise and Inkwell (1914-1915), a Cubist composition in which Rivera experimented with non-traditional materials, such as sand.

Both Picasso and Rivera traveled to Italy in 1917 and 1920, respectively and, following the war, they embraced a revalorization of the classical aesthetic tradition. Highlighted in Return to Order and Indigenismo are Picasso’s first monumental neoclassical painting, Three Women at the Spring (1921), an exceptional loan from the Museum of Modern Art, New York (MoMA), and Rivera's Flower Day (Día de Flores) (1925). 

Also included here are portions of Rivera’s personal holdings of ancient Pre-Columbian ceramic and stone sculptures, a collection that has never traveled outside Mexico.

Grounding Mexico's culture into its Pre-Columbian past are Rivera's 1930's public murals and paintings enriched with references to Mexico’s ancient civilizations. Included in the Rivera and Pre-Columbian Art section is The Flowered Canoe (La Canoa en Florada) (1931), portraying two worlds: influenced by Western culture are the mestizos who enjoy a day at Lake Xochimilco, while representing the force of tradition is an indigenous oarsman.

The gallery dedicated to Picasso and Mythology explores works that shaped the foundations of 20th century art through formal experimentation with the art of the past.  

In Studio with Plaster Head (Atelier avec tête et bras de plâtre) (1925), Picasso reflects on the dialectic relationship between ancient Greek and Roman tradition with Western painting and the beginning of modernism.

Picasso's Minotauromachy (1935), based on the mythological figure, is considered the most important etching on paper of the 20^th century. Compositionally, this masterwork is the precursor to Picasso's iconic mural-scale painting Guernica.

Situated between the final two galleries, the film Ideologías y Muralismo, commissioned by LACMA and directed by Rodrigo García, explores Rivera’s mural Pan American Unity (San Francisco City College, 1940) and Picasso’s Guernica (1937).

The exhibit is currently on view through May 7, 2017, at BCAM, Level 2, 5905 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90036. For more information call (323) 857-6000 or visit http://www.lacma.org/

Picasso and Rivera will travel to Mexico City, where it will be on view from May 31 to September 10, 2017 at the Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes.