After a small sample of Pablo Picasso artwork in the Impressionist and Modern Masters exhibition, the Fine Arts Center is proud to present an entire exhibition of this 20th Century master in the Annette Seagraves Galleries.
Forty rare etchings by Picasso are featured in an exhibition, Pablo Picasso: Etchings 1966-1971, running from July 19 to Sept. 14, 2008.
Picasso follows Rembrandt, Durer and Goya, in extending and developing the etching tradition. Etching was the favorite printmaking method of these masters, and was especially favored by Picasso. Picasso’s principal biographer, John Richardson, describes the themes of Picasso’s late drawings and prints as follows:
“As a result of an ulcer operation in November 1965, Picasso had given up traveling and become something of a recluse. Except for his wife, her daughter and a few professional associates, he saw very few people. To extend the cast of characters in his imagery, Picasso was obliged to invoke figures from his past as well as from his pantheon of favorite painters. Hence, former mistresses, Barcelona whores, harlequins and circus folk from the Rose period rub shoulders with personages from the work of Raphael, Rembrandt, Goya, Ingres, Degas and van Gogh, and sometimes the artists themselves.”
The breadth and depth of Picasso’s expression in these etchings is representative of his importance as the artist who more than any other assumed the mantle of Western aesthetic traditions by absorbing and then combining those traditions into a new modernity.