Photo provided by the Cincinnati Art Museum courtesy American Federation of Arts
Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881-1973), Landscape of Mougins II, May 5, 1965, Oil on canvas, 38 3/16 x 76 5/8 inches, Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, 13718, Image © Blauel Gnamm – ARTOTHEK, © 2023 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society, (ARS), New York, Courtesy American Federation of Arts
Pablo Picasso was a master of Cubism and collage. But to celebrate him for a specific mastery is to exclude the Spanish artists’ extensive impact on the world, in both art appreciation and practice.
The Cincinnati Art Museum will be the second venue to host a unique exhibition that demonstrates Picasso’s prolific exploration of landscape through paintings and sculptures. Picasso Landscapes: Out of Bounds with Musée Picasso-Paris opens June 23 and features a summer-long catalog of Picasso-themed events.
April 8 marked the 50th anniversary of Picasso’s death, which the exhibit was curated to honor — it previously appeared at The Mint Museum in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Peter Jonathan Bell, the museum’s curator of European paintings, sculpture and drawings, who is leading the exhibition’s presentation in Cincinnati said in a press release that Out of Bounds offers an understanding of Picasso in a new light.
“His mastery of the human form and of still life is unquestioned,” Bell stated in the press release. “With the works assembled for this exhibition, we are finally able to appreciate how significant landscape was for Picasso throughout his life, and in turn how consequential Picasso was for landscape painting — how he was able to transform this venerable genre to meet his needs as an innovator and expressive interpreter, reshaping the world around him through his art.”
Throughout his 75-year career, Picasso created unmatched abstract and Cubist visuals that often carried concrete purpose. His black and white oil painting, Guernica, is regarded as one of the most popular and influential anti-war paintings in history. His lesser-known landscape works reveal details of culture and architecture as he established himself in new places.
Colorful villages and shadowy forests are organized in unison with bare, snowy trees and precise shapes, shaded expertly to convey depth and height. The exhibition was organized by the American Federation of Arts with guest curator Laurence Madeline and the support of the Musée national Picasso-Paris.
Out of Bounds represents Picasso’s lifelong engagement with landscape, featuring more than 40 paintings and a number of sculptures acquired from 25 public and private collections from across the United States and Europe, according to the Cincinnati Art Museum’s press release.
The press release also states that the exhibit, “Traces the elemental role of place, environment and interface between humanity and the natural world in Picasso’s art.”
Picasso Landscapes: Out of Bounds opens June 23 and coincides with summer-long events that range from lectures, gallery talks, technique lessons and artmaking sessions.
Visit the Cincinnati Art Museum’s website for more information. The exhibition will be free for nonmembers every Thursday evening from 5–8 p.m. as well as its opening weekend, June 23–25. The free opening weekend is made possible by Duke Energy.
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