Recent Acquisitions: Work by Pablo Picasso and Hunt Slonem at Surovek Gallery

Last year, museums around the world commemorated the 50th anniversary of the death of Pablo Picasso (1881- 1973).

 

Picasso  was an extraordinary painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor and ceramist. He was certainly one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century. 

 

The Picasso Museum in Paris has just made available an online portal that will give researchers and the general public access to thousands of Picasso’s artworks, photographs and related documents. The Museum has also opened a Picasso Studies Center in the Hotel de Rohan that contains documents, a library, archival material and the digital portal with contents relating to Picasso’s life and work.

 

Picasso began to make prints as early as 1904. He began with simple drypoint prints and continued, throughout his life, to expand his techniques to include color pochoirs (stencil prints), lithographs and aquatints.

 

 

After World War ll, he began to experiment with linoleum cuts. He would recut a single linoleum-covered block for each color in the image, starting with the lightest color and ending with the darkest, and print them sequentially on the same sheet of paper.

 

Tete de Bourbon (Head of a Jester), made in 1965, is an outstanding example of Picasso’s printmaking. It is a recent acquisition, available at Surovek Gallery.

 

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Hunt Slonem has lived and worked in New York since 1973. He recently moved his studio to a four-level, 40,000-square foot building in Hell’s Kitchen. Slonem is surrounded by the sights and sounds of the city, but his work remains focused on nature - birds, butterflies and bunnies.

 

“The thing that influenced my art was going out and seeing color, style — just something about the intensity of New York,” he said in a recent interview. “It was kind of the beginning of minimalist work, and it was the end of juicy painting New York – it was a funny period where I just kept painting through it all and the possibility of showing and living off the work was a good thing. I was blessed with no other abilities. I just kept painting. I always somehow believed that I would be able to survive as a painter.” 

 

 

His studio is filled with his paintings, his antique furnishings and the dozens of tropical birds that he cares for in his aviary.

 

Slonem’s unique style has gotten him international acclaim. His works are currently being shown at the Louisiana State Museum in New Orleans, the Albany Institute of History and Art in Albany, New York and the San Antonio Botanical Garden in Texas.

 

Amazons, an oil on canvas painting, created in 2019, is available at Surovek Gallery.

 

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June 20, 2024