The greatest
art acrobat of all times. Well, Picasso actually was a mask, a strolling
player, a mocking and unattainable, omnivorous and rapacious kobold of
painting.
All the masters of the twentieth
century sooner or later found their personal sign, their stylistic and
conceptual way to enclose their artistic and human events.
He didn't. Restless and
stubborn, he put himself into question over and over, drawing broadly in
reality, in the landscape, in women, in history, in myth, in the slow,
troubled creative process of his adventure companions, always new stimuli
and brand new solutions to problems of form and vision.
 For
this reason Picasso is not a painter but a whole universe present in all
the great museums of the planet and always generous with discoveries and
new revelations. If we think that the three hundred works presently being
exhibited at Palazzo Grassi were insured for 1,200 billion lira, we can
imagine what the commercial value of all his works can be today.
Commercialisation of art?
Certainly. But maybe this is the only way to grasp the mythical, absolutely
unattainable dimension of this figure who crossed this declining century
of ours like a meteor, enriching it with unforgettable icons and with his
inexhaustible vitality.
However, seven years of
his activity are enough to give life here in Venice, to an exuberant and
pagan world, overflowing with a creative happiness and brilliant visual
metaphors.
Among them, the most intriguing
unquestionably are those linked to the Commedia dell'Arte and the circus
world of clowns and tumblers. Picasso certainly saw a metaphor of human
condition and, more precisely, the condition of the artist inside society
in all this.
Thus, his characters are
not depicted while giving vent to their talents, but always in their makeshift
dwellings or in the streets, crushed by everyday needs looming upon them
as if on anyone else.
As if to emphasise the absurdity
of their situation, the figure that is often depicted while feeding, washing
itself or cradling a baby, wears the anachronistic costume of a medieval
minstrel with his beret, while later it will be replaced by Harlequin's
mask in which, sometimes, he will identify himself or dress his son Paul.
A vital and cathartic disguise
in which Picasso tried the freeing power of the mask and of the make-up
with respect to his own inhibitions.
Those were prolific and
creative years for the artist who lived in Italy an intense passion for
the Russian Olga Koklova, a solemn and statuesque beautiful classical dancer.
Soon, the European tragedies
of the thirties, from the Spanish Civil War to the rise of Nazism, slowly
cancelled the Harlequin's image and replaced it with the awesome apparition
of Guernica's Minotaur.
Gianfranco Malafarina |
|
.
Pablo Picasso - Arlecchino
(1923) - Olio su tela - 130 x 97 cm
Parigi, Musée
National d'Art Moderne
Centre Georges Pompidou |
Pablo Picasso - Maternità
(1921) - Olio su tela - 94,8 x 92,7 cm
Collezione privata, Courtesy
Jan Krugier Gallery, New York. |
|
Italian
Mensile di scienza medica e attualita`
