Picassos get first pfflblic showing

Press, 16 August 1988, Page 18

Picassos get first pfflblic showing

By

STEPHANIE NEBEHAY

NZPA-Reuter Geneva A modern art collection owned by a friend of Picasso and including 40 of the artist’s works is on show in Geneva, the first time it has been seen by the public.

The treasures were amassed by the renowned American dealer, Heinz Berggruen, aged 74, who was persuaded to show the works by GenevArt, a new group intent on breathing life into Geneva’s dormant cultural scene.

GenevArt, a non-profit foundation, has as cochairman Simon de Pury, the European director of Sotheby’s auction house in Geneva.

Pury said Berggruen was one of the greatest art dealers of the second half of the century. The jewel of his collection — and the centrepiece of the exhibit at Geneva’s Musee d’Art et d’Histoire — is a small oil called “Les Poseuses” (The Models), painted by Georges Seurat in 1888. Three nude female figures pose in a studio corner before a section of Seurat’s huge, vividly-col-oured “Dimanche d’ete a la Grande Jatte,’* which captured a nineteenthcentury bourgeois day in a Paris park.

Berggruen, who had to swap two Picassos and a Vincent Van Gogh drawing to acquire “Les Poseuses” in 1970, said in an interview: “I hate to think what the Picassos are worth today. But it is marvellous to have the Seurat. It is a terribly

rare and wonderful painting. There are only about eight to 10 Seurat masterpieces. This is the only one in private hands.” Berggruen’s collection features unusual and intimate works, including pencil portraits by Paul Cezanne of his mother and son and a ceramic model of an Oriental fountain by Raoul Dufy. Among the Picassos is a gloomy pastel from the artist’s "blue period,” “At the Cafe-Concert” (1902), in which a man and woman stare at us hauntingly, ignoring a cabaret. “Minotauromachy” (1935), an enigmatic etching of a woman being abducted by a horse while a man-bull tries to save her, carried the inscription, “For my friend Berggruen, Picasso.”

Also on show is a palette of oils with inscriptions handwritten by Henri Matisse.

Berggruen told reporters that he was pleased with the exhibit, which will close on October 30, and may lend it to the Museum of Metropolitan Art of New York. “To be a collector is egoistic — you buy for your own pleasure and enjoyment,” he said. “By making the collection available to a large public, you get away from the egoistic instinct. Why keep it all to yourself?” The same thinking led him to donate 90 works by Paul Klee to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1984.

Berggruen, a Germanborn Jew who was studying art in California when World War II broke out, became a United States citizen in the 19405. After

the war he moved to Paris, opening an art gallery and building his reputation for a sharp eye.

Befriending painters — including Picasso, Matisse and Joan Miro — he began collecting art for his private enjoyment. Berggruen fondly recalls the Spanish-born Picasso: “I saw a great deal of him. He was very generous and warm — a great human being and the most important artist of our century.” After retiring in 1980 and moving to Geneva two years later, he concentrated on rounding out his collection, composed essentially of works by five artists — Picasso, Cezanne, Seurat, Matisse and Alberto Giacometti. “To see it in a museum is to see how it all ties in, and possibly what is lacking,” he said.

Asked whether he had spotted any gaps, Berggruen replied: “There are always things you wish to have when you collect. I am very interested in the Cubists. Eventually I will have to get some works by Fernand Leger and Juan Gris.”

Berggruen confirmed that major museums were seeking to exhibit his collection, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Tate Gallery and Royal Academy in London, and the Museum of Modern Art in Madrid.

“The Met in particular 1 is very anxious to show it. J It probably would not be before 1990 at the earliest I do want to give the collection a rest after ! such a prolonged show. I J don’t want it to become a travelling circus.”