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‘Picasso and Rivera: Conversations Across Time’ at LACMA

Pablo Picasso, Three Women at the Spring

Pablo Picasso, Three Women at the Spring (Trois femmes à la fontaine), Summer 1921
oil on canvas, 80 1/4 × 68 1/2 in., The Museum of Modern Art, NY, gift of Mr. and Mrs. Allan D. Emil , ©2016 Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York , digital Image © The Museum of Modern Art / Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, NY

Picasso and Rivera: Conversations Across Time The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), with Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City, presents ‘Picasso and Rivera: Conversations Across Time’ (December 4, 2016 – May 7 , 2017)]]>

Source: LACMA

More than 100 paintings and prints by both artists are in dialogue with one other and with dozens of ancient Greco-Roman, Iberian, and Aztec objects, “Picasso and Rivera” aims to advance the understanding of the artists’ practices, particularly in how their contributions were influenced by the forms, myths, and structures of the arts of antiquity. Picasso and Rivera’s radical approach to understanding ancient art was in many ways subversive: by doing that they also rewrote art history — greatly enlarging the recognition of artistic contributions of ancient civilizations. Ancient art became essential for their sense of the future, both personally and politically.

“By placing masterworks by Picasso and Rivera alongside Greco – Roman, Etruscan, and Iberian works as well as Mesoamerican sculptures and ceramic figurines, the exhibition weaves together distant geographies and worlds to blur the frontiers of time and space,” said Diana Magaloni. “’Picasso and Rivera’ views both artists as inventors of a new visual reality in the first decades of the 20th century. Diego Rivera brought the Pre-Columbian world to the forefront by showing that the art produced by these cultures was for the Americas what traditional Greek and Roman art was for Europe.”

This exhibition is presented in five thematic sections, highlighting the moments of interaction and divergence between the two artists: “The Academy”, “Cubism and Paris”, “Return to Order and Indigenismo”, “Rivera and Pre-Columbian Art”, and “Picasso and Mythology”.

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'Picasso and Rivera: Conversations Across Time' at LACMA