Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) presents Pablo Picasso’s (1881-1973) Femme à la montre (1932), a portrait of one of the most revered subjects in the artist’s paintings — his muse and lover Marie-Therese Walter.
The work is a classic example of the Modern Master’s highly prized works from 1932, a particularly fruitful and pivotal year for the artist that was marked by his first major retrospective at the Galeries Georges Petit, Paris.
“We are pleased to bring this extraordinary painting to Miami where it will be a highlight for viewers throughout the summer,” said PAMM director Franklin Sirmans. “We are grateful for the opportunity from lender Emily Fisher Landau to present this important painting.
“In 1985, when the museum was in its infancy, as the Center for Fine Arts, we hosted an exhibition of works by Picasso. In line with our coming 35th Anniversary, this important work by Picasso is also a reminder of our past exhibition history.”
On view at PAMM through Oct. 16, the Miami community will have a unique opportunity to engage with the work of one of the most influential artists of the 20th Century, which is part of the museum’s commitment to presenting modern art to its audience.
Born in Malaga, Spain, Picasso created a distinctive look and line within his paintings and drawings during the early 1900s while living in Barcelona and later in Paris, where he settled for good in 1904.
From the beginning of the 20th Century until his death in 1973, the artist continued to appropriate and invent new styles. In the true spirit of Modernism, he constantly challenged himself and his contemporaries to create something new.
Influenced by African art that he encountered in Paris, Picasso paved the way to the birth of Cubism and played an integral role in the foundation of Surrealism, while always working from a representational image — something tangible or recognizable.
The voluptuous and sensual images of Walter that Picasso created between 1927 and 1937 mark a departure from his Cubist phase, in which images of figures were contorted as if seen from several angles at once. While Femme à la montre portrays the sitter frontal and more or less clothed — unlike many of his other nude depictions of her — the exposed breast hints at the characteristically sensual quality of many of his other portraits of Walter, also known as his “Golden Muse.”
The softness of her figure and the hardness of the chair in which she sits are synthesized into one full image, while the unmistakably clear eye that gazes out at the viewer suggest the inner life of a sitter who was also the artist’s lover and muse.
Picasso’s Femme à la montre (1932) is on loan from Emily Fisher Landau.
Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) promotes artistic expression and the exchange of ideas, advancing public knowledge and appreciation of art, architecture and design, and reflecting the diverse community of its pivotal geographic location at the crossroads of the Americas.
Led by Director Franklin Sirmans, the nearly 35-year-old South Florida institution formerly known as Miami Art Museum (MAM), Pérez Art Museum Miami opened a new building, designed by world-renowned architects Herzog & de Meuron, in Downtown Miami’s Museum Park on Dec. 4, 2013. The facility is a state-of-the-art model for sustainable museum design and progressive programming and features 200,000 square feet of indoor and outdoor program space with flexible galleries; shaded outdoor verandas; a waterfront restaurant and bar; a museum shop; and an education center with a library, media lab and classroom spaces.
For more information, visit www.pamm.org.
