October 02, 2014

Pace Gallery

Picasso & Jacqueline:
The Evolution of Style

October 31, 2014–January 10, 2015

Pace Gallery Midtown
32 East 57th Street
New York, NY

Pace Gallery Chelsea
534 West 25th Street
New York, NY

www.pacegallery.com

“As memory crowds out the present, Jacqueline becomes Picasso’s entire universe. She is everywhere, in his dreams, in his fantasies…” *

The Pace Gallery in New York is honored to present its eighth exhibition of the work of Pablo Picasso with Picasso & Jacqueline: The Evolution of Style, opening October 31. The exhibition features nearly 140 works on loan from major international private and public collections, including the Picasso family and estate of Jacqueline Roque, many of which are on view to the public for the first time. This exhibition is the first to examine Picasso’s late transformation in style as seen exclusively through the portraits of Jacqueline, and includes paintings, sculptures, works on paper, and ceramics, all depicting Jacqueline in a myriad of ways—from odalisque to bride—that immortalize her arresting beauty.

Picasso & Jacqueline: The Evolution of Style is presented at two Pace locations, the gallery in Midtown (32 East 57th Street) and in Chelsea (534 West 25th Street) and will be on view from October 31, 2014, to January 10, 2015.

The exhibition begins in 1954, when the 73-year old Picasso started courting the 27-year-old Jacqueline. That year also marked the death of Matisse, an early rival and later friend of Picasso, who had been the only living artist that Picasso considered his equal. In an unprecedented burst of creativity, Picasso created a wide range of works spanning multiple mediums depicting odalisques in homage to Matisse. It was also during this period that Picasso began to model Jacqueline in his reworkings of French and Spanish masters like Velázquez, Delacroix, and Manet.

Accompanying the exhibition and complementing the works on view is a group of more than 50 photographs by David Douglas Duncan, a confidant of Picasso, who captured the artist at work and during private moments with Jacqueline. Of Jacqueline, Duncan said, she "often appeared to be stepping out of one canvas into another of herself."

Picasso & Jacqueline: The Evolution of Style is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with essays by Professor Jonathan Fineberg, the Edward William and Jane Mart Gutgsell Professor of Art History Emeritus at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; art historian and critic Barbara Rose; and independent curator Daniel Leers.

Picasso & Jacqueline: The Evolution of Style marks the eighth exhibition organized by the Pace Gallery devoted to Picasso. The other exhibitions were Beyeler at Pace: Modern Masterworks from the Beyeler Gallery (1971); Picasso: The Avignon Paintings (1981), the first gallery exhibition of the late works which inspired the major 1984 exhibition Picasso: The Late Years, 1963–73, at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; The Sculpture of Picasso (1982); Je suis le cahier—The Sketchbooks of Picasso (1986-89), which traveled to 15 museums in six countries; Picasso and Drawing (1995); Pablo Picasso: Works from the Estate and Selected Loans (1998); and Picasso, Braque and Early Film in Cubism (2007).

* Barbara Rose, from her catalogue essay.

For more information about Picasso & Jacqueline: The Evolution of Style, please contact Madeline Lieberberg at T +1 212 421 3292 / mlieberberg@pacegallery.com. For general inquiries, please email newyork@pacegallery.com; for reproduction requests, email reprorequest@pacegallery.com.