We love Picasso

We love Picasso

7 October 2023–7 January 2024

Pablo Picasso (1881 Malaga–1973 Mougins) exuded an unbelievable aura, influencing artists of the same generation and younger in each of his creative phases. The exhibition ‘We love Picasso’ shows the precursor of changing artistic styles as the source of inspiration and role model for respective contemporary art scenes in Central and Eastern Europe. The group exhibition presents works by German, Polish and Czech artists who adopted Picasso’s motifs and styles and developed them further.

Even before World War I, Czech artists orientated themselves on the Cubist works of Picasso and Georges Braque. The art historian Vincenc Kramář, as one of the first collectors of both artists, contributed significantly to this. At the same time, Kramář was an important promoter of the Czech Cubists. With ‘Czech Cubism’, a broad movement developed that encompassed all areas of everyday life.

Picasso’s influence can be readily found in the Polish art scene, especially after his participation at the Peace Congress of Intellectuals in Wrocław and Warsaw in August/September 1948. In 1955, Wojciech Fangor created a large-format copy of Picasso’s Guernica. However, he and other Polish artists also interpreted Picasso’s style freely. In East Germany, the reception of Picasso’s representational style was selective from the 1950s onwards, clashing as it did with state-imposed Socialist Realism.

In the exhibition works by the following artists, among others, are being shown: Jankel Adler, József Csáky, Josef Čapek, Slawomir Elsner, Wojciech Fangor, Emil Filla, Otto Gutfreund, Bernhard Heisig, Alfred Hrdlicka, Tadeusz Kantor, Jiří Kolář, Bohumil Kubišta, Jacques Lipchitz, Goshka Macuga, Moriz Melzer, Antonín Procházka, Bernard Schultze, Willi Sitte, Erika Streit, Bohumil Štěpán, Max Uhlig and Alois Wachsman.

Katalog