Calder-Picasso

Calder-Picasso will be the first exhibition in Spain to examine the creative resonances between two of the most seminal figures of 20th-century art: American artist Alexander Calder (1898–1976) and Málaga-born Pablo Picasso (1881–1973).

Comprised of more than 100 works of art, the show focuses on a key connection between Calder and Picasso found specifically in their exploration of the void, or the absence of space, which both artists defined from the figure through to abstraction.

The exhibition is jointly curated by Alexander S. C. Rower, President, Calder Foundation, New York;  Bernard Ruiz-Picasso, Co-President, FABA; Claire Garnier and Emilia Philippot, Musée national Picasso-Paris; and José Lebrero Stals, Museo Picasso Málaga. It is organized in partnership with the Calder Foundation, New York, and Fundación Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso para el Arte (FABA) and co-produced by Museo Picasso Málaga and Musée national Picasso-Paris. It is sponsored by Fundación Unicaja and in collaboration with Erco.

Alexander Calder and Pablo Picasso – two of the most seminal figures of twentieth-century art – innovated entirely new ways to perceive grand themes. While the resonances between them are filled with endless possibilities, a key connection can be found specifically in their exploration of the void, or the absence of space, which both artists dealt with in their works, starting from the figure right through to abstraction.

Both Picasso and Calder were born in the late 19^th century and their respective fathers were classically trained artists. They both left their home countries and went to work in France, where they constantly reinvented themselves, destroying their own precedents and those of other artists, and renewing the art of their time, along with our way of perceiving it. While there are certain parallels and synergies in the work of these two icons of modernism, they never came to share their artistic ideas, beyond a mutual interest in popular entertainments such as the circus.

Their personal encounters during their lifetime were also few and far between. They met in 1931, when Calder presented his first exhibition of non-objective sculptures at Galerie Percier in Paris; Picasso arrived before the vernissage to introduce himself to Calder and spend time with his radical new works. Their paths crossed again in July 1937, in the Spanish Pavilion at the Exposition Internationale in Paris, where Calder’s Mercury Fountain was installed opposite Picasso’s Guernica. Calder was the only non-Spanish artist to be included in this pavilion, thanks to his friendship with its architect, Josep Lluís Sert. Both Pablo Picasso and Alexander Calder became celebrities and referents for their generation: the Museum of Modern Art in New York gave a Picasso retrospective in 1940, and one to Calder in 1943. Their works were also shown at the São Paulo Biennial in 1953, and both artists undertook commissions for UNESCO in 1958.