oclassical elements, due to Picasso’s trav- els to Rome, Florence, Naples and Pompeii during those years, the ones with the Mi- notaur are the most authentic notes in his diary. Indeed, Picasso believed that paint- ing is just another way of keeping a journal. Thus, visitors to Heritage House have a unique opportunity to take a peek into the private life of a genius, but also an adven- turer, passionate lover etc. And his relations with concubines, women, models. Picasso succeeds in doing all of that with simple lines, facial expressions and compositions inlaid with seemingly antique sculptures and motifs. Thus, the battle of horses and bulls might mark a specific emotion between the author and the noted ladies, but when Bac- chante (participants in the Bacchanal) jump into the drawing, it is easy to imagine which forces bound and divided them. After all, Picasso left it up to the view- er to choose how to interpret all of these contexts. WHY PICASSO IS MORE INGENIOUS THAN BRAQUE It could generally be said that Pablo the maestro was fairly indifferent when it came to other people’s opinions. When (in 1907) he shocked the world with his“Les Demoi- selles d’Avignon”, resembling a broken mir- ror, some people asked him what kind of art was his, when no one understands it. He re- sponded in style:“I do not read English, and an English book is a blank to me. This does not mean that the English language does not exist”. The world had to learn the dia- lect of Cubism. And that “cascading” language was ac- tually created by Picasso on the basis of Afri- can sculpture, but also from copying Georg-
es Braque. And he did that so skilfully that he could claim that Braque was the author of the replicas. A curiosity was that Braque had survived a shot to the head, which had an im- pact on his vision. He really saw everything cubed, while Picasso had to imagine that, or rather, to explain it geometrically. On another occasion, when a German officer responded to the painting“Guernica”, a cubist display of the bombing of the city, by asking Picasso,“Did you do this?”, Picas- so replied laconically: “No, you did”. Perhaps this brilliant Spaniard was a pacifist, keeping out of the way during the Spanish civil war, but he was not a coward, as he also knew how to express his views in his pictures, through scattered heads and limbs of humans and animals, amidst ruins, but also with razor-sharp words. During Picasso’s lifetime, from the age of seven, when he painted his first oil painting, he created around 13,500 pictures, 100,000 prints, 34,000 book il- lustrations and 300 sculptures, meaning simple mathematics cannot calculate how many works he created on a daily basis. At the time of his death, in 1973, the to- tal value of his works was estimated at $750 million, according to the Guinness Book of Records. However, just one of his works from this countless opus, “Nude, Green Leaves and Bust”, from 1932, sold for $106.5 million in 2010. In many ways he was similar to Mozart – enormous talent, versatile, expressed early, and pushed rather a lot by an am- bitious father, very fruitful, and unlike the musical“wunderkind”, Picasso did not die too soon, nor in poverty. At the age of 80 he painted like a young man, leaving noth- ing for tomorrow. And by the next day he was already seeking new inspiration.
Celina kolekcije Vollard Suite podeljena je u šest segmenata The Vollard Suite collection is divided into six segments
been even bigger if Ambroise Vollard hadn’t been killed in a car accident in 1939. How- ever, the limited number of prints actual- ly added value to the collection, though it was still broken up at the auction of Vollard’s collector’s legacy. Most of it managed to be bought at the auction by the gallery “Kos”, explains Leon Pogelšek, director and cura- tor of the gallery. The collection follows the course of Pi- casso’s erotic and other thoughts expressed through graphics. The Vollard Suite as a whole is divid- ed into six segments, one with a different theme, with the other five in the form of smaller wholes: Battle of Love, Sculptor’s Stu- dio, Rembrandt, Minotaur and the Blind Mi- notaur. Pogelšek draws attention to the last two, because the Minotaur, half man – half bull, a mythical creature beloved by the gods, is actually the alter-ego of this famous art- ist. Although all segments are rich with ne-
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