Picasso & Jacqueline: The Evolution of Style
Pace Gallery
October 31, 2014 – January 10, 2015
Picasso & Jacqueline: The Evolution of Style is the first exhibition to examine Picasso’s transformation in style as seen exclusively through the portraits of Jacqueline with more than 125 works including oil paintings, drawings, sculptures, etchings, aquatints, and linocuts. It also marks the sixth exhibition organized by the Pace Gallery to be devoted to the artist.
The exhibition begins in 1954, the year Picasso started living with and painting Jacqueline Roque (they married in 1961). It was also the year Matisse died. An early rival and later good friend of Picasso, Matisse was the only contemporary that Picasso considered his equal. “Au fond, il n’y a que Matisse,” Picasso frequently said: “All things considered, there’s only Matisse.” Picasso & Jacqueline includes ten works from the artist’s series Les Femmes d’Alger [Women of Algiers](1954-1955), including four of the oils that comprise the series of fifteen variations; several oil studies; etchings; and an aquatint.
The exhibition will also show unusually personal works. Jacqueline with Paloma and Catherine (1960) shows Jacqueline with her daughter from her first marriage, Catherine Hutin, and Paloma Picasso, the artist’s daughter with his companion of the 1940s and early ‘50s, Françoise Gilot. Also in the exhibition is Jacqueline Dressed as a Bride Full Face I (1961), an aquatint and drypoint that commemorates Picasso and Jacqueline’s wedding.
Accompanying the exhibition is group of more than 50 photographs by David Douglas Duncan, one of the central documentary photographers of the 20th century and a confidant of Picasso. Duncan captured Picasso at work as well as scenes from quotidian life with Jacqueline, the muse who inspired Picasso’s last two decades. In many of the photographs she is seen sitting in a chair dressed in various costumes and accessories that Picasso incorporated into portraits of her.
Works in the loan exhibition come from members of Picasso’s family and from the estate of Jacqueline Roque. Among the major institutions lending to the exhibition are the Detroit Institute of Arts; the Tate Modern, London; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Centre Pompidou, Paris; and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. A number of important works from private collections will be featured as well.
