Picasso: The Great War, Experimentation and Change

Columbus Museum of Art, in partnership with the Barnes Foundation, presents an exhibition featuring one of the greatest artists of all time – Pablo Picasso. Inspired by CMA’s Picasso Still Life with Compote and Glass, 1914–15, the show features some 50 works drawn from major museums and private collections from around the world. The exhibition explores how Pablo Picasso’s work was impacted by the tumultuous years of the First World War, when the artist began experimenting with both cubist and classical modes in his art. Important canvases by Picasso’s contemporaries—including Henri Matisse, Amedeo Modigliani, and Diego Rivera—will also be presented. 

The exhibition also features four costumes that Picasso designed for the avant-garde ballet, Parade, which premiered in Paris in 1917. Parade was the first cross-disciplinary collaboration of its kind. The ballet, which tells the story of an itinerant theater group performing a sideshow, or a parade, was viewed as a revolutionary approach to theater. Picasso was the first avant-garde artist involved in such a production. With Picasso’s strange, geometric costumes, Parade might be seen as the ultimate fusion of classical and cubist forms.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.