Picasso Carmen

FRENCH LANGUAGE

Pablo Ruiz Picasso (1881-1973)

This is the French edition of the exhibition catalogue relating about Picasso / Carmen shown to Picasso Museum, Paris in 2007.

Carmen, provocative and rebellious, the icon of passion, haunts the work of Picasso.
The mythical heroine of Prosper Mérimée ...
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FRENCH LANGUAGE

Pablo Ruiz Picasso (1881-1973)

This is the French edition of the exhibition catalogue relating about Picasso / Carmen shown to Picasso Museum, Paris in 2007.

Carmen, provocative and rebellious, the icon of passion, haunts the work of Picasso.
The mythical heroine of Prosper Mérimée (novella published in 1845), and of Georges Bizet (opera created in 1875) had haunted the artist since the first painting of his youth where the sulphurous auras of whores and the gypsies intermingled.

This exhibition shows how Picasso's fascination with Carmen resembles a long, imaginary, secret quest on the theme of tragic love.

About 220 works relating to this "Carmen theme" have been brought together for this show: paintings, drawings, etchings, photographs and documents from the collection and the archives of the Musée National Picasso, along with works on loan from the Meseu Picasso, Barcelona, the Fondación Museo Picasso, Málaga, the Salomon R Guggenheim Museum, New York and the Pushkin Museum in Moscow.
Presented both thematically and chronologically, the exhibition looks first at the artist's early work (1898-1903). As far back as 1898, the sketch of a gypsy girl he did in Madrid mentions the name "Carmen". This started a series of works influenced by Goya's black vision in the Caprichos and the Sueños where Bohemian women and majas (the beauties), merge into the symbolic figure of Celestina, matchmaker and witch, (Fernando Rojas, La Celestina or the tragi-comedy of Callisto and Melibea, 1499; Pablo Picasso, La Célestine, 1904).
Then, through the distortions of a fantasy Spain, full of mantillas, shawls, large combs and fans, the artist completely transforms the heroic femme fatale and submits her to his most radical visual experiments.
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