A Master for All Ages

Pablo Picasso had the first public showing of his work in 1896, when he was a boy of 14. A century has gone by since then, and not a year has passed that his work hasn’t been on view somewhere in the world. Picasso’s dominance of the 20th century has been extraordinarily complete. A frighteningly prolific artist who continued to produce work up until his death in 1973 at the age of 91, Picasso has been the subject of approximately 700 books (19 were published in 1996 alone), and his catalogue raisonne fills 33 volumes.

Of the 20 most expensive paintings in the world, seven are by Picasso. In 1989 a Japanese businessman paid $51 million for “Pierrette’s Wedding,” a work from the artist’s blue period. And six years later another blue-period picture, “Angel Fernandez de Soto,” was sold to Andrew Lloyd Webber for $29.15 million. Some new records were set in November when 57 works from the Victor and Sally Ganz collection were auctioned at Christie’s New York. Among the collection were a dozen Picassos of a quality one rarely sees on the open market.

“There are people who’ve been waiting for ‘The Dream’ to come to market since just after Victor bought it in 1941 for $7,000,” says Michael Findlay, Christie’s director of 19th and 20th century works of art, of the painting that sold for $48.4 million.

“The Ganz collection also included paintings from 1954-55 that we sold for phenomenal prices,” Findlay says. “When Picasso made that work in the ‘50s he was acknowledged as one of the great living artists, but the work he was making then was dismissed as insignificant. In fact, the only person who spoke up on his behalf then was David Hockney, who was riding high with his first flash of fame. He took every opportunity to declare that the best painting being done in the ‘60s was by Picasso, and at the time that was considered an incredibly perverse thing to say.”

That’s certainly changed.

“Today, nobody feels there was a period of Picasso’s work that was a flop,” says Robert Shapazian, director of the Gagosian Gallery in Beverly Hills, where a selection of works by Picasso are on view through Jan. 17. “Nonetheless, a great deal of connoisseurship does come into play in the Picasso market. For instance, Pierre Berge and Yves St. Laurent collect Picasso, but they’re only interested in the Cubist period, and the same is true of Ronald Lauder. The Ganzes, on the other hand, found works in every period that they thought were brilliant.”

The Gagosian exhibition includes a handful of paintings from various periods, but is largely a showcase for “Jeux de Centaures.” A suite of 11 drawings completed in 1948 depicting dancing centaurs and pipe-playing fauns, the series was created to provide the cover design for the Ballet des Champs-Elysees 1948 season.

“It’s been loaned to us for exhibition by the family, and we’re not sure if it will be for sale,” Shapazian says. “If there’s the possibility of it going to an interesting collection, the owners might consider selling it, but it absolutely won’t be broken up.”

Considerably more ambitious is the Picasso exhibition slated to open at PaceWildenstein, also in Beverly Hills, on Jan. 22. A survey of 35 paintings that includes major works from every period of the artist’s career, among them “Femme au beret” (1937) and “Le sommeil,” a portrait of Picasso’s mistress, Marie-Therese Walter, painted in 1932, the exhibition will offer approximately a dozen paintings for sale. Largely composed of works on loan or on consignment from the estate, the show also includes loans from private collections that won’t be for sale and have been borrowed by the gallery in order to complete the show in terms of its theme.

“The earliest piece in the show will be a blue-period picture from 1903 that’s only been exhibited once and will be seen in America for the first time--it was part of Picasso’s personal collection and is now owned by one of the children,” says Arne Glimcher, chairman of PaceWildenstein. “The most recent works are two paintings completed in the year prior to his death. The piece I’m most thrilled to be showing is ‘Arlequin assis jouant de la guitare,’ a Synthetic Cubist Harlequin from 1918 that was one of the pictures that led to ‘The Three Musicians.’ We recently sold it to a collector in L.A., who’s quite generously lending it to us for the show.”

Who or what governs the flow of Picasso’s work onto the market? The answer to that requires a brief recapping of Picasso’s untidy personal life, because he died without a will, leaving the French legal system to decide who got what.

In 1918 Picasso married Olga Kolkova. He remained married to her up until her death in 1955, and together they had a son, Paulo, who died in 1975. Paulo had three children: Pablito, who committed suicide in the week after Picasso’s funeral in April 1973; Marina, who wrote a scathing book about her grandfather; and Bernard. Marina and Bernard received portions of the estate. (Bernard Ruiz-Picasso’s third collection of poetry, “Pages de Garde (endpapers),” illustrated by George Condo, will be published this month by PaceWildenstein, and goes on view at the gallery Jan. 22, in conjunction with the survey of his grandfather’s paintings. Ruiz-Picasso will attend the opening.)

By the early ‘20s Picasso’s marriage to Kolkova was functionally over and he’d taken up with Walter, with whom he had a daughter, Maya, in 1935. Walter committed suicide in 1977; Maya received part of the estate.

In 1943 Picasso began a liaison with Francoise Gilot. Together they had two children, Paloma and Claude, both of whom were awarded portions of his estate. Gilot left Picasso in 1953, and that same year he began a relationship with Jacqueline Roque, whom he married in 1961. Roque had a 2-year-old daughter from a previous liaison, Catherine Hutin-Blay, who was raised by Picasso (she was 22 at the time of his death). Roque committed suicide in 1986; Picasso’s stepdaughter, Cathy, thus received Roque’s portion of the estate.

“All the heirs live in Europe and each is in charge of their own collection. However, the work isn’t divided equally among them,” Glimcher says, explaining that the bulk of Picasso’s works went to his three legitimate heirs, with smaller portions going to those born out of wedlock. “The largest group of works are held between Bernard, Marina and Cathy Hutin-Blay. Claude, Paloma and Maya have equal but smaller holdings. Claude handles most legal matters relating to Picasso, but he’s not involved in what each of the heirs sell. There’s no conflict between them, but they don’t consult with each other, nor are they obliged to.”

Adds Alexander Apsis, director of Sotheby’s New York Impressionist and Modern art department: “When Picasso died, his family handled things extremely well. They made a complete inventory and rather than paying the estate tax in cash, which would’ve required the sale of many works, they paid through the donation of works used to create the Musee Picasso [which opened in Paris in 1985]. Thus they avoided flooding the market with Picassos being sold to pay estate tax. And subsequently, his heirs have been extremely sophisticated in terms of how they’ve sold works; they’ve done it carefully so as to avoid rocking the market.”

Just exactly what did Picasso’s heirs come into possession of? That remains a mystery, as French law doesn’t require that such information be made public.

“It’s unknown how many, if any, major works are still in the estate,” Findlay says. “But if you look through various catalogs on the blue and rose periods--which are the most coveted periods of his work--you can see where all the paintings are. I don’t think there are great blue-period Picassos that have gone unrecorded nestling in the family.”

Glimcher concurs that Picasso’s blue period “is the most elusive in terms of getting really good works. Those pictures came out of his studio long ago and most of them are now locked in museum collections. On the other hand, one can still buy a beautiful drawing for around $100,000, or a great print for between $20,000 to $100,000. Picasso was the greatest printer of the 20th century, and the etchings he produced at the time he painted ‘Guernica,’ for instance, bring upward of $2 million to $3 million when they come to market.”

Claims Apsis: “Picasso produced a lot, and virtually every auction of 20th century art includes several works by him. As time goes by, the works become increasingly scarce, however, and I don’t foresee a time when the market will become saturated with his work.”

Glimcher agrees: “The market for his work appears to be insatiable. Two years ago Sotheby’s held an auction devoted only to works by Picasso, and all 150 pieces sold in a single night.”

(Says Findlay of that sale: “Those were works someone had bought relatively recently, and for whatever reason, wanted to bail out and was prepared to take a loss. Consequently, the estimates were very low, and that’s a formula for success at auction.”)

“Picasso cuts across all boundaries in terms of who collects him, and he’s the only artist who does that,” Glimcher continues. “For instance, people who collect very contemporary things will also buy Picasso’s late paintings because they had a profound effect on the Expressionism of the ‘80s, and were important to artists like [Julian] Schnabel, [Francesco] Clemente and [David] Salle.”

“Many collectors have begun looking at the late works with great interest, largely because of the influence it had on painting in the ‘80s,” Apsis concurs. “Taking the long view, though, I’d say his most revered period is the Cubist work because it was so revolutionary. Cubist pictures aren’t necessarily the most coveted by collectors, however, because they tend to be very tough, challenging works. Which isn’t to suggest they go begging--the Cubist pictures rarely appear on the market.”

Having concluded that there’s a network of collectors eager to acquire anything and everything he did, the question still nags: Why Picasso, as opposed to any number of other artists?

Findlay pauses for a long moment when the question is put to him, then replies: “There’s an exhibition of Picasso’s early work now on view in Boston that presents a defining moment. There’s a painting he made in the village of Gosol of a woman combing her hair that was completed in August of 1906. Hanging next to it is another painting of a woman combing her hair that he made in Paris the following month.

“It’s virtually the same image, yet the Gosol picture marks the end of Picasso as a representative artist,” Findlay explains. “In the Paris picture, you begin to see the masks, the deformation of the figure--the painting is an object and a thing unto itself. At that moment, with echoes of Cezanne in his head, Picasso started the 20th century. And for that, we continue to honor him.”

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* “Jeux de Centaures: A Suite of Drawings,” Gagosian Gallery, 456 N. Camden Drive, Beverly Hills. Tuesdays to Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Through Jan. 17. (310) 271-9400.

* “Pablo Picasso: Works From the Estate and Selected Loans,” Pace-Wildenstein, 9540 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills. Opens Jan. 22. Tuesdays to Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Through March 7. (310) 205-5522.