Extraordinary the exhibition that Milan and the Royal Palace are dedicating to Picasso and his works. This important group of works belongs to the Paris museum dedicated to the artist and now closed for a renovation.
Ideally the exhibition, which will remain open until January 6, 2013, is connected to the exhibition in Milan in 1953 that was focused on the “Guernica”, this time available only in a video with the main phases of the process.
Memento of the ’53 exhibition is the “Massacre in Korea” from1951, inspired to Goya painting with the shocking scene of the shooting of women and children.

Picasso was on one side a great connoisseur of art and artistic movements of his time, and at the other side an innovateur, ready to translate into art, influences and the stimuli received both from the cultural world and the world tout court .
The retrospective in Milan, with chronologically path describes all bthis through paintings and sculptures, films and photographs, drawings and prints.
In the oldest works on display, from the early twentieth century, there is the influence of impressionism and expressionism, the well known “Blue Period” and “Célestine” it is an outstanding example.

In later years, Picasso’s painting evolves. The colors are more vibrant and the figures are outlined in black. as in this study for the Demoiselle d’Avignon.

From this “proto cubism” the evolution of Picasso’s art will arrive to a greater breakdown of the figure in geometric patterns, in pure volumes. The cubism with some significant works such as’ “Homme à la guitare” and “Homme à la mandoline”

Musical instruments again in oune of the first few collages that are born in this period, made with a variety of materials like the wood used for this “Guitare et bouteille de Bas” from1914.

For next ten years, at the turn of the ’20s, there is a return to realism, a representation of almost “photographic” figures. This is attested by the portrait of Olga, in the same pose of a photo exposed some room before.

A unique grace in “Les baigneuses “, 1918.

 

Picasso does not stop in his  search for new artistic expressions and over the next decade, with the approach to surrealism, the formsin his painings  are changing. The square section of Cubism gives way to rounded forms as in “La Lecture”.

The echo of the violence of the war is expressed in the paintings of the years 1935-1951, through strong colors and the distortion of the shapes. Faces presented
from the front or from the side, distorted human forms.
The portrait of Dora Maar is emblematic.
And the  search for new forms continues .

Picasso transforms “objects trouvés” in “objects d’art” and  reinterpreting
famous paintings like “Dejeuner sur l’herbe” by Manet.