Lecture & Reception for A Graphic Journey: Prints by Pablo Picasso
with Megan Fontanella, Curator, Modern Art and Provenance
at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York

Tuesday, July 18 | 6 – 8 p.m.
Members: $60 | Non-Members: $100

Enjoy an exclusive look at A Graphic Journey: Prints by Pablo Picasso. Megan Fontanella, Curator, Modern Art and Provenance at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York will lead the event with a lecture.

A Graphic Journey presents an insightful gathering of approximately 60 prints by one of the great masters of the 20th Century, Pablo Picasso. It provides a unique window into a significant era in art history and takes a serious look at the artist’s development and creative process. Best known for his paintings and sculptures, Picasso was also a major innovator in the medium of printmaking. He made prints throughout his career — his first in 1899, when he was still a teenager, and his last in 1972, when he was 90 years old.

The exhibition illustrates the three major phases of Picasso’s printmaking career, as well as his signature artistic themes. A special feature of this collection is the number of proofs it contains. These proofs illustrate the unique working relationship Picasso maintained with his printers and their workshops, and allow for close examination of the working process behind it. Organized by Landau Traveling Exhibitions, Los Angeles, CA.

Megan Fontanella is Curator, Modern Art and Provenance, at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. Her research encompasses late nineteenth- through mid-twentieth-century European and U.S. avant-gardes, with a particular focus on dealer networks and collecting patterns. Since joining the institution in 2005, Fontanella has curated or co-organized over thirty exhibitions for the Guggenheim’s constellation of museums in Bilbao, New York, Venice, and formerly Berlin, as well as developed shows abroad for the traveling exhibitions program.

To mark the opening of the exhibition A Graphic Journey: Prints by Pablo Picasso at the Huntsville Museum of Art, Guggenheim curator Megan Fontanella examines the artist’s initial forays into Paris as a young man and the impact of the contemporary subjects and styles he encountered there. Pablo Picasso (b. 1881, Málaga, Spain; d. 1973, Mougins, France) arrived in the city of light from Barcelona in autumn 1900, during the final weeks of the Exposition Universelle. Though the nineteen-year-old Spaniard spoke little French, he absorbed everything Paris had to offer over his initial two-month stay, and again after his return to the capital the following spring through the end of 1901. Picasso patronized not only the art galleries, but also the bohemian cafés, raucous nightclubs, and sensational dance halls that permeated his hilltop neighborhood of Montmartre. Le Moulin de la Galette (ca. November 1900), one of the artist’s first paintings in Paris and recently the subject of a conservation research and treatment project at the Guggenheim, is a highlight from this pivotal juncture in the artist’s development. Picasso’s early work presages the social disenfranchisement that he brought into sharper relief in his subsequent Blue Period (1901–04) through his depictions of the exploited and vulnerable. On the precipice in 1900, Picasso eventually crafted a singular practice reflective of his time.

Featured image:  Pablo Picasso, Tete de Femme au Chapeau, 1962, Linoleum cut in color on Arches watermarked paper, 12 3/4 x 10 5/8 in. Printed by Arnera. From the collection of Timothy Collins of Los Angeles, CA; image courtesy of Landau Traveling Exhibitions, Los Angeles, CA.