PABLO PICASSO. Le peintre et son modéle en plein air

Alda Fendi at Palazzo Rhinoceros, opens its doors to Pablo Picasso's Le peintre et son modèle en plein air (1963) from the Intesa San Paolo collection on show until 16 October 2022.

Pablo Picasso. Le peintre et son modéle en plein air (1963). Galleria Rhinoceros (Photo by Carlotta Ceccarini)

In the gallery spaces of archistar Jean Nouvel's Rhinoceros Palace, in the heart of the ancient Roman Foro Boario, Raffaele Curi sets up the Malaga artist's prestigious work, homage to the female figure and by creating a scenographic installation with a theatrical aftertaste that combines the performing and visual arts.

The recurring theme is the dance that embodies the French and Spanish spirits of the Cubist master. Thus we see the rehearsal of Miguel Àngel Berna's La Templanza for the Ballet Nacional de España in the hall at the entry to the gallery and on the first floor of the building between Jean Nouvel's flats, the more modern Ballet to Pulcinella set to music by Stravinsky for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, whose set design was created by Picasso himself. Along the exhibition route we also find an insight into the Café de Flor in Paris, a meeting place for the greatest artists of the time, and, through the floors of the moon cavedium, three references to corrida with the greatest matadores of the time, including El Rafi, the famous French matador de toros. Corrida, a theme dear to Picasso, who loved its colour, gold and folklore.

In the sun's cavedium, alongside the palace's symbolic rhinoceros, there is writing on the wall with the words of Neruda. Explaining the connection with Picasso is the curator Raffaele Curi himself: "It strikes at the heart the amber dust that in the churches of Spain transforms summer into a church of gold. Neruda's poetry, which crystallises a ray in a timeless and ascetic hypothesis, creates the great friendship between Picasso's 'animus' and Neruda's. A friendship theirs that alludes and refers to disruptive scenarios filled with perpendicular light and absolute colours that only summer can give. Like summer in a golden church".

The oil on canvas depicting a female figure en plein air in a natural setting, a clear reference to Manet's Le Déjeuner su l'herbe, in fact dates back to 1963 and the early 1960s are the years in which it is known that Picasso looked strongly at the great old masters of art history. The painting originally belonged to the Parisian Galerie Leiris, from this gallery began the painting's journey that passed from bank to bank until it arrived in the collection of Intesa San Paolo, which lent it for the first time on the occasion of an exhibition, making it available to the public. The theme of the painting recurs frequently in Picasso's works between the 1950s and 1960s and constitutes the meeting point between the reflection on the artist's profession in dialogue with the history of art and the representation of the female nude, revisited in a Picassian key through the decomposition and re-aggregation of the subjects represented, in a less selective cubism than the analytical and synthetic one, moreover this painting dates back to the late phase of Picasso's work. The Spanish painter's focus is on the seated female nude and the man observing her, in a dialogue of complicity and seduction. The background is reduced to the predominant colours green and blue, dark colours that are almost flattened into a homogeneous space, defined with the quick, rapid and approximate strokes typical of late Picasso. A few hints for the foliage of the trees, a triangular element for the parasol above the easel, the silhouette of the hat, more reminiscent of a bullfighter than a painter, create a simplicity characteristic of Picasso, who manages to transform every gesture into an element charged with meaning.

From the main floor of the gallery, following the rhinoceros footprints scattered on the floor, one is taken on a walk through the floors of the Rhinoceros Palace. An innovative guide that leads to the discovery of the innermost moments of the painter protagonist of the exhibition. In fact, climbing the stairs up to the terrace of the palace, one can admire several photos that portray Picasso in his most intimate moments with the people who surrounded him throughout his long life.

Photos made by Carlotta Ceccarini