His Guitare sur un guéridon, painted in 1920, offers a different vision of the artist's world: the guitar, one of Picasso's most enduring creative symbols, becomes almost animate, intertwined with a bowl of fruit in an arrangement whose fractured forms embody the revolutionary language of Cubism, a movement Picasso helped pioneer.
Pablo Picasso's name has become synonymous with artistic genius, reinvention and creative rebellion. More than fifty years after his death, critics continue to regard him as the artist who most fully expressed the passions and contradictions of the 20th century.
His Buste d'homme barbu, composed in 1965, presents a commanding figure from an important series of bearded men Picasso painted late in his career. Part artist, part musketeer, part theatrical character, the subject functions as an archetype, one through which Picasso explored masculinity, history and his own aging identity.
Pablo Picasso
Guitare sur un guéridon by Pablo Picasso,
Painted 1920. M.S. Rau
Diego Rivera occupied similar territory, where artistic achievement, political conviction and celebrity collided. His monumental murals made Mexican history and working people visible on an unprecedented scale, while his Marxist convictions and marriage to Frida Kahlo made Rivera a subject of fascination both during his life and posthumously. Mother and Child, completed in 1934 in tempera on plaster, brings the monumentality of his public murals into an intimate format that celebrates the universal significance of family. Mercado de flores (Mujer cargando un niño), painted in 1951, similarly elevates an everyday figure through vibrant color and bold line.
Diego Rivera
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Picasso's name has become synonymous with artistic genius, reinvention and creative rebellion. More than fifty years after his death, critics continue to regard him as the artist who most fully expressed the passions and contradictions of the 20th century.
His Buste d'homme barbu, composed in 1965, presents a commanding figure from an important series of bearded men Picasso painted late in his career. Part artist, part musketeer, part theatrical character, the subject functions as an archetype, one through which Picasso explored masculinity, history and his own aging identity.
Buste d'homme barbu by Pablo Picasso,
Dated 1965. M.S. Rau
Diego Rivera
Diego Rivera occupied similar territory, where artistic achievement, political conviction and celebrity collided. His monumental murals made Mexican history and working people visible on an unprecedented scale, while his Marxist convictions and marriage to Frida Kahlo made Rivera a subject of fascination both during his life and posthumously. Mother and Child, completed in 1934 in tempera on plaster, brings the monumentality of his public murals into an intimate format that celebrates the universal significance of family. Mercado de flores (Mujer cargando un niño), painted in 1951, similarly elevates an everyday figure through vibrant color and bold line.
