Picasso
Window to the World
6.2. — 16.5.2016

Picasso
Window to the World

6.2. — 16.5.2016

The window motif can be found throughout Picasso’s entire body of work. Windows represented much more than simple everyday objects. Picasso. Window to the World examines for the first time this central motif. A window addresses the issue of visualization, and for Picasso it symbolized painting itself. It invokes the studio as a place of creation where the painter can bring home the world. It opens up the space and communicates between the interior and exterior. The window symbolizes human relationships as well as transcends the boundary between painting and sculpture. It represents the artist and acts as a substitute for the selfportrait.

As the exhibition shows for the first time, Picasso used the window motif even in his early work to mark the interface between the artist and his world. By concealing a window with a curtain or blocking it with a canvas, he placed it on equal footing with painting. In his late work Picasso continued to explore the window motif, which always contained the artist’s reflection of himself.

During periods of artistic reorientation, he repeatedly returned to the subject of windows and used them to examine fundamental artistic questions. These occurred during transitions to a new phase in his work such as his fresh start following Cubism, and in the interaction with his sculptures, or in his ongoing dialog with Henri Matisse. He created series of window motifs that he presented in exhibitions immediately upon their completion. Picasso’s window paintings contain his painted theory of images.

The exhibition is sponsored by ExxonMobil, Bankhaus Lampe, Lampe Asset Management GmbH and Claus und Annegret Budelmann.