ALLENTOWN MUSEUM TO PRESENT PICASSO & DELAUNAY’ NOV. 25

AVV 90-14 #712454

 

ALLENTOWN, PENN. — On view November 25–February 3 in the Allentown Museum of Art’s Payne Hurd Gallery, “Picasso & Delaunay: The Book as Inspiration” will feature a rare portfolio of 13 prints by Pablo Picasso (1881–1973). The portfolio is the result of a collaboration with Parisian fine art publisher Ambroise Vollard to produce an illustrated edition of Honore de Balzac’s novel, Le Chef-d’oeuvre inconnu, published in 1931.

In this novel Balzac tells the story of an old artist who worked in anonymity for ten years on a painting that was to be the epitome of feminine beauty, but the painting on which he labored proved to be incomprehensible to anyone but the artist.

Picasso did not literally illustrate the Balzac tale but provided 11 simple line compositions that play off a favorite subject — the artist and his model — and one bullfight scene.

Accompanying these works will be an unusual and compelling work, a “simultaneous book” created by modernist designer Sonia Delaunay-Terk (1885–1979) and poet Blaise Cendrars (1887–1961). Inspired by the forms of Cubism and by the colors of French painter Paul Gauguin and Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh, Delaunay (as she is better known) developed a style based on the juxtaposition of bright prismatic colors.

Dr Jacqueline M. Atkins, the Kate Fowler Merle-Smith curator of textiles, is the curator for this exhibition, which will feature prints drawn from the museum’s extensive collection of works on paper.

The museum is at 31 North Fifth Street. For information, www.allentownartmuseum.org or 610-432-4333, extension 10.