Cubism and War: The Crystal in the Flame
Picasso Museum, Barcelona
20 October, 2016 - 29 January, 2017
Some 80 works are presented, all created in the period spanning from 1913 to 1919. The clear interconnections with the Paris avant-garde from before the war take on new relevance here, along with the consolidation of discoveries made during the war in work completed afterwards.
The feature artists in the exhibition are three foreigners based in France during the period, who due to their citizenship status were not obliged to participate militarily: Pablo Picasso, Juan Gris and Diego Rivera. Furthermore, the vital role of other artists like María Blanchard, Gino Severini and Jacques Lipchitz are explored, along with certain French artists who did not end up fighting, like Henri Laurens and Henri Matisse. These latter ended up doing some of their most experimental work during the period. The exhibition also explores the artistic response of two great cubists who survived their time in the trenches: Georges Braque and Fernand Léger.
During the war itself, from 1914 to 1918, a group of artists in the rearguard responded to the situation by channelling cubism’s burst of energy, linking the previous period of the avant-garde with the conflict itself. This was a highly positive, creative response to the urge to reaffirm a constructive path in the context of the war’s mechanization, responding to a need whose reparative urgency was deep and intense. The evolution of cubism during the Great War (thinking specifically of the movement in Paris itself under the imminent threat of chaos) towards greater control, coherency and integrity as the predominant values in cubist art, is still relevant today, a full century later.
The exhibition curator is Christopher Green, Professor of the History of Art at the Courtauld Institute, a leading art history institution affiliated with the University of London.
PICASSO MUSEUM, BARCELONA
MUSEU PICASSO, BARCELONA
Montcada, 15-23 - 08003 Barcelona
