Gertrude Stein & Pablo Picasso
Pablo is doing abstract portraits in painting. I am trying to do abstract portraits in my medium, words. — G. Stein, 1945
Gertrude Stein and Pablo Picasso The Invention of Language is the current exhibition at the Musée du Luxembourg, organized as part of the celebrations marking 50 years since Picasso’s death. Curated by Cécile Debray, President of the Musée national Picasso Paris and Assia Quesnel, associate curator and art historian, the exhibition steers clear of the recent controversy surrounding the artist and focuses rather on Stein and Picasso’s close friendship and the way they influenced each other’s work and the American avant-garde.
Gertrude Stein arrived in France in 1904, two years after Picasso. Bonding over their shared feelings of marginalization and their shoddy command of French, they quickly became friends. Stein and her brother collected Picasso and Matisse’s works and met with the artists often. According to Cécile Debray, understanding the relationship between Stein and Picasso is crucial to understanding how and why Gertrude Stein had such a huge influence on American avant-garde art.
The exhibition has two main parts, with Stein being the common thread. The “Paris Moment” shows Stein’s poetry through interaction with paintings and sculptures by Picasso. The second part, the “American Moment”, shows the tremendous impact that Stein and Picasso’s approach to art had on poetry, painting, music and theatre, especially in the United States. You can see works by such pioneering artists in the neo-dada and Fluxus movements as John Cage, Joseph Kosuth, Bruce Nauman, Ray Johnson, Carl Andre and Emmett Williams, to name just a few.
This exhibition is rather academic. The texts accompanying the works are only in French but you can download a visitor’s guide in English before you go. But this should not detract from the enjoyment of accessing so many works by 20th-century greats in one place.
You can find many books on both Gertrude Stein and Picasso as well as other artists at Bill & Rosa’s Book Room.
Practical Information:
The exhibition is open every day from 10:30am to 7pm. Evening hours on Mondays until 10pm except October 17, 24 and 31 December from 10:30am to 6pm. Closed on 25 December.
More information here: https://museeduluxembourg.fr/fr/horaires-et-acces
