Madrid,
Immersed since 2012 in an exhibition program dedicated to architecture and its photographers, which will resume next fall, the ICO Museum did not show its own collections since then at its headquarters; yes outside the capital, because its VOLLARD SUITE It has been exhibited in about thirty Spanish centers and in more than twenty international spaces.
The opportunity to meet again with a selection of these funds, with part of their graphic works, we will have until next summer: a double sample, “the Picasso vollar suite and the engraving in the ICO Museum collection,” he presents by On the side of the emblematic Picassian series, acquired by this agency in 1991, and on the other hand. ninety; This set responds to a commission made in 1985 by the Ministry of Culture and the Decaro editor, except for those eight paintings, whose authors coincide with those of some of those engravings and that have been incorporated into the route precisely so that the viewer can relate the aesthetics and resources of both technique.
The initial commission, which demanded two works for each author, would materialize in an exhibition that took place in the then Spanish Museum of Contemporary Art – before Queen Sofia – directed at that time by Aurelio Torrente, then the first head of the ICO Museum. Gonzalo Doval has now commissioned this assembly, of which Díaz-Caneja is part, which barely frequented the multiple work; Manuel Boix, Ràfols-Casamada, Hernández Pijuan, Luis Gordillo, José Hernández, Eduardo Arroyo, Rafael Canogar, Josep Guinovart, Lucia Muñoz, Alfonso Fraile, Manolo Valdés, Darío Villalb , Hernández Mompó, Juan Genoese, Pérez Villalta, Juan Barjola, Miguel Ángel Campano and Fernando Bellver.
As for the VOLLARD SUITEPicasso’s main series of engravings – and it is possible that of the twentieth century – it date between 1930 and 1937 and composes an intimate diary of his life and art at that stage, one of the most fruitful of his career. His name comes from the Marching that printed it and that first exposed the artist in Paris, in 1901, but it is not a commission of his: the Frenchman proposed Picasso to exchange its plates (which were initially ninety -seven, and they were rounded One hundred with portraits of Vollard himself) for paintings that Malaga interested him, including some Cézanne.
The suite starts, as we said, in 1930, married Picasso with Olga Khokhlova -over the papers would not stop being until the death of the dancer, in 1955 -but would evolve for the most part, since 1932, to the rhythm of his relationship with the very young Marie-Thérèse Walter and that of her very particular attitude towards creation, her consideration of himself as an author and her understanding of the subject of the artist and the model. In its first engravings, and less in the latter, it is handled in obviously classical parameters, of return to order, with a clear line, strong volumes or reminiscences of the odalisks; At the time some critics considered these works as an involution in their production.
This project, when exposed, can be ordered chronologically or by thematic groups; Since in the previous exhibitions it has been chosen to articulate it from their themes, this time the temporal criteria has been chosen, without stopping mentioning in the posters to which matters of matters (there are seven) corresponds each piece. In any case, and in general, a majority of the works refer to the relationship between the artist, the model and the finished composition, the latter linked to the sculptures, of surrealist root, in which he worked in parallel in his study by Bo timegogoup, next to Paris.
To the sculptor (himself) he presents him as a mature man, with a robust body, who will reveal minotaur and then blind Minotaur, by identifying Picasso with the strength and respect they inspired and also with the misunderstanding around that figure; To the very young model (Walther), first looking with more attention to the finished pieces and gradually fixing less in them and more, with some devotion, in its architect: Marie-Thérèse, seventeen years old at the beginning of their relationship, he did not have Intellectual concerns, unlike his “successor” Dora Maar. In the engravings it is intuited as the ties between one and the other evolve from the company to domination, as can be seen in the block of The battle of love.
We will also contemplate the plates he dedicated to Rembrandt, as a great engraver to which he wanted Saskia. The final engravings, in addition to an extraordinary technical domain (in some combined etching and buril; the exposure at the beginning of introducing the public in the definition of these procedures), they prove their interest in minotauromaquia and the reflection of their complex personal life in those those Scenes in which she is Maya, the daughter she had with Walther, who guides that mythological being who was her alter ego by promoting him to the future.
The viewer can see some scratched plates – it was so so that they would not be printed more recorded – and signatures in them, not in the latter, that we will contemplate, however, numbered. Vollard died in a traffic accident in somewhat strange circumstances: so many laps gave his car that the bronze sculpture he had in the back hit him in the head, perhaps causing his death in itself. In later years, the engravings of the VOLLARD SUITE They began to be sold autonomously, hence no more than ten complete series of this exceptional set that combines delicacy and brutality, classicism and avant -garde; This is one of them.
“The Picasso Vollard Suite and the engraving in the ICO Museum collection”
ICO Museum
C/ Zorrilla, 3
Madrid
From February 13 to July 20, 2025
