Picasso to Hockney: Modern Art on Stage

Exhibition Website

Oct 10 2019 - Dec 29 2019

McNay Art Museum

San Antonio, TX


Picasso to Hockney: Modern Art on Stage features more than 120 objects from the renowned Tobin Collection of Theatre Arts, an unparalleled treasure-trove of scenic and costume designs amassed by Robert L.B. Tobin, the late San Antonio visionary who recognized and championed theatre arts as fine art.

Performance design has increasingly become an essential part of contemporary artists’ creative practice. Modern artists like Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Fernand Léger, Natalia Gontcharova, Joan Miró, Robert Indiana, Louise Nevelson, Robert Wilson, and David Hockney collaborated with the exciting and thought-provoking writers, musicians, and dancers of their day.

In the 1970s and 80s, American painters and sculptors influenced by 1960s performance art positioned the U.S. at the global forefront of innovative theatre design. Dynamic directors and cutting-edge opera companies defined this era by inviting contemporary artists to design new and classic works. Modern masters Jim Dine, Robert Indiana, and David Hockney created Pop-inspired stage productions. More recently, Robert Wilson and Lesley Dill each merge drawing, sculpture, music, language, and movement into live performances they designed, conceived, and directed.

As museums redefine their role in the world and develop new audiences, Picasso to Hockney engages the spectrum of music, dance, and theatre lovers by exploring how fine artists designing for performance challenged conventional theatre design, and often redefined their own work in the process.​


Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website
Image: Leon Bakst, Costume design for Vaslav Nijinsky as Chinese Dancer in Les Orientales, 1917

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