Retrato de ambroise vollard picasso biography

(Saint-Denis, La Réunion, – Versailles, )

A friend of Alfred Jarry's, Ambroise Vollard was an art dealer whose influence on the evolution of contemporary art history is essential. He opened his own art gallery in Paris in , organised an important show of works by Cézanne () and purchased works by Van Gogh and Gauguin (). He also orchestrated the first Picasso exhibition to be held in Paris () and the first exhaustive display of works by Matisse (). The dealer’s domed, balding head, bulbous nose, thin lips, neatly trimmed beard and the set of his features are admirably characterised and easily deciphered. Vollard was notorious for his tendency to drop off to sleep in company and Picasso’s portrait shows him behaving true to form: his eyes are closed and his head droops.

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Inscription: Signed and dated (lower right, in graphite): Picasso / Paris Aout

Ambroise Vollard, Paris (–d. ; purchased from the artist in August for Fr ; his estate, from ); [Martin Fabiani, Paris]; [André Weil, New York, until ; sold in December , through John Rewald, to MMA]

New York. Museum of Modern Art. "Picasso: 75th Anniversary Exhibition," May 22–September 8, , unnumbered cat. (p. 48).

Art Institute of Chicago. "Picasso: 75th Anniversary Exhibition," October 29–December 8, , unnumbered cat.

Philadelphia Museum of Art. "Picasso: A Loan Exhibition of His Paintings, Drawings, Sculpture, Ceramics, Prints and Illustrated Books," January 8–February 23, , no.

Rotterdam. Museum Boymans. "Van Clouet tot Matisse, Tentoonstelling van franse tekeningen uit amerikaanse collecties," July 31–September 28, , no.

Paris. Musée de l'Orangerie. "De Clouet à Matisse, dessins français des collections américaines," October–November , no.

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "French Drawings from American Collections: Clouet to Matisse," February 3–March 15, , no.

Fort Worth Art Center Museum. "Picasso: Two Concurrent Retrospective Exhibitions," February 8–March 26, , no.

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Masterpieces of Fifty Centuries," November 14, –June 1, , no.

Paris. Cabinet des dessins, Musée du Louvre. "Dessins français du Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York de David à Picasso," October 25, –January 7, , no.

New York. Wildenstein Gallery. "Modern Portraits: The Self a

Ambroise Vollard () was one of the great art dealers of the 20th century. He championed Paul Cezanne, Van Gogh, Renoir, Gauguin and Henri Matisse. He promoted Picasso's blue and rose periods, but he was careful about cubism. When Picasso later returned to a figuration informed by cubist richness and surrealist eroticism, they collaborated on one of Picasso's greatest achievements: his lubricious, mytho-erotic Vollard Suite, engraved plates completed in , culminating in emotional portraits of Vollard, who was to die two years later in a car crash.

In Portrait of Ambroise Vollard, Vollard's downcast eyes, apparently closed, the massive explosion of his bald head, multiplying itself up the painting like an egg being broken open, his bulbous nose and the dark triangle of his beard are the first things the eye latches on to. They are recognizable. At least that's the way your mind, through habit, composes the details into information.

But what head? What beard? Above Vollard's eyes is a broken architecture of shards of flesh- or brick-coloured painting; planes that have been started and stopped, as if in a slow-motion exaggerated cartoon of the movement a painter makes between looking up, recording on canvas the detail he sees, looking back. The process of the painting reveals itself with gross, physical explicitness, and in doing so, creates a kind of caricature; Picasso monstrously transfigures the aspect of Vollard's head, its massive dome, that most impresses him.

There is not a single aspect of his face that is "there" in any conventional pictorial sense. The more you look for a picture, the more insidiously Picasso demonstrates that life is not made of pictures but of unstable relationships between artist and model, viewer and painting, self and world. And yet this is a portrait of an individual whose presence fills the painting. Vollard is more real

painting by Pablo Picasso

Portrait of Ambroise Vollard (French: Portrait de Ambroise Vollard) is an oil-on-canvas painting by Pablo Picasso, which he painted in It is now housed in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow. The painting is a representation of the influential art dealer Ambroise Vollard, who played an important role in Picasso's early career as an artist. It is painted in the style of Analytical Cubism, which Picasso pioneered.

Background

The prominent art dealer Ambroise Vollard played an influential role in launching and establishing Picasso's career as an artist. In , when Picasso was aged just 19 years, Vollard presented his first exhibition, which resulted in the sale of many of Picasso's works. Despite this, Vollard did not consider the exhibition to be a success and he did not buy the remaining artwork. He did, however, buy several works from Picasso's Blue and Rose periods after Leo and Gertrude Stein started to collect Picasso's work. The professional relationship between Picasso and Vollard would last for many years, although it was not always harmonious, with Picasso complaining that Vollard had paid a low price for his work at the start of his career.

By , Picasso's technique was becoming more abstract and his reputation grew as a Cubist painter. While searching for an art dealer, Picasso painted several portraits of art dealers, including Portrait of Ambroise Vollard. Vollard was also depicted by many other artists that he dealt with, including Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Paul Cézanne. Vollard published a print series of engravings and illustrated books in the s and s, which included works by Picasso, most notably the Vollard Suite. This significantly raised Picasso's profile as an artist in Europe and America. Although Picasso's reputation continued to grow, Vollard never offered him a contract.

Vollard appreciated the significance of this painting, calling it "notable", b