Katya Kazakina details the next Picasso show organized by John Richardson at Gagosian which opens at the end of April in New York:
Three-quarters of the pieces in these exhibitions were either loaned by or consigned from Picasso’s family, including his children and grandchildren, giving collectors their first look at many works.
“Each of Picasso’s seven heirs inherited a remarkable collection of the artist’s work,” says Richardson […]
[Francoise] Gilot is now working with Richardson and Castellani on the fourth exhibition, which will cover her years with Picasso, from 1943 to 1953. Richardson says they lived in a small house in Vallauris with a garden and raised their two children until she became the only woman to leave him.
“I am very independent,” she says. “I was a completely new type of woman for him.”
Picasso used terra-cotta roof tiles to make full-length images of Gilot, who was 40 years younger than he. Picasso also sculpted her as pregnant and as wheeling a baby carriage. His canvases transformed her into a flower and captured her playing with their children.
“These sculptures relate to their life at Vallauris, the little villa where they lived, and Le Fournas, the derelict former orange-flower distillery where he revolutionized painting and sculpture,” Richardson says. “He’d gather scrap metal from a nearby junkyard and turn it into sculpture.”
Richardson, who has written about Picasso for half a century, still gets excited about his friend’s art. Sitting in his Manhattan apartment, which overflows with books, flowers and works by Picasso, Warhol and Ingres, he makes a promise about the fourth show.
“Our show will cast new light on a period that has never been studied in depth,” he says.
