Eighty-six years ago it was 1932: a leap year in which the first technicolor film was produced, the Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected thirty-second president of the United States of America, in Italy the first issue of Puzzle Week was published, while on the terrace of he Hotel Excelsior in Venice was the opening of the first edition of the Mostra Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica, in India Gandhi began his first hunger strike in prison and Pablo Picasso was consecrated to the Olympus of art.
The splendid setting of the Tate Modern in London hosts the exhibition entitled Love, fame, tragedy. Pablo Picasso, 1932 in which 100 of the Spanish artist's most precious works are presented in chronological order and divided into ten rooms, including paintings, sculptures, drawings and photos.
The exhibition was curated by Laurence Madeline and Virginie Perdrisot-Cassan of the Picasso Museum in Paris and by Achim Borchardt-Hume, Nancy Ireson, Laura Bruni and Juliette Rizzi of the Tate Modern and created in collaboration with the consultancy firm EY and with loans from the Picasso National Museum in Paris and from private institutions.
1932 was the most prolific year from an artistic point of view - Picasso painted six important works in just 12 days - but also the most conflicted and intense on a personal level for Picasso, split between his love for Marie-Thérèse Walter and his wife Olga.
The itinerary of the exhibition takes the visitor into Picasso's life which almost accompanies him month after month, into his art as they have developed and evolved: starting from the three dazzling nudes for their colors Nude in a Black Armchair (1932), Nude (1932), Green Leaves and Bust and The Mirror (1932), two still life works Still Life with Tulips and Still Life: Bust, Cups and Palette (1932) and again the iconic and wonderful Girl Before a Mirror (1932) on the meaning of the transience of life. Still Rest (1932), Sleep and The Dream (1932) – painted in three days from 22 to 24 January – and inspired by the lover in intimate and private attitudes.
“I paint the way some write an autobiography. The paintings, finished or not, are the pages of my diary”, Pablo Picasso.
