In an upstairs room in an unfrequented corner of Zurich’s Kunsthaus, there is a portrait of one of the unsung heroes of modern art.
In an upstairs room in an unfrequented corner of Zurich’s Kunsthaus, there is a portrait of one of the unsung heroes of modern art. Wilhelm Wartmann was the first director of this splendid gallery, and in the autumn of 1932 he mounted the first major retrospective of the work of Pablo Picasso. This autumn, to celebrate its centenary, the Kunsthaus is mounting the same show. It’s a unique chance to see how the world saw Picasso at his peak — and how Picasso saw Picasso — for this groundbreaking exhibition was curated by the artist himself.
Nowadays it’s not unusual for big galleries to devote entire shows to living artists — or for the artists themselves to roll up their sleeves and muck in. In 1932, however, this sort of thing was regarded as terribly avant-garde. British museums didn’t buy or show contemporary art and New York’s Museum of Modern Art wouldn’t stoop to stage a show curated by a mere painter. Fortunately, Herr Wartmann wasn’t so stuffy or insecure. Since the mid-1920s he’d been trying to bring Picasso to the Kunsthaus, and when Picasso put on a solo show in a private gallery in Paris (in a bid to outdo Matisse, who’d staged a one-man show there the year before) Wartmann wasted no time in inviting him to curate his own retrospective in Zurich. The show ran from 11 September to 30 October 1932.
Picasso chose 225 works for this landmark exhibition, ranging from his late teens to his early fifties. It was an eclectic mix. There were pictures from his Blue and Pink periods and his Classical and Cubist phases, culminating in that subtle blend of figuration and abstraction which came to define his mature work.
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