Picasso Museum Shortlists Five Teams For €55 Million Sculpture Garden

(MENAFN- USA Art News) The Musée National Picasso-Paris has selected five architecture and landscape teams to compete for a €55 million project that aims to establish the“world's leading garden of Picasso sculptures” by 2030. The museum and Paloma Picasso, the artist's daughter, announced the shortlisted designers on Friday, September 11.

The international competition includes the following five teams: Antoine Dufour and Wagon Landscaping; Lina Ghotmeh, Pierre-Antoine Gatier and Florence Mercier Paysagiste; NeM Niney et Marca Architectes and Atelier Jacqueline Osty & Associés; Stanton Williams, Atelier PNG, Vogt and Francesca Torzo; and Drubigny Architecte and Sarah Price Landscapes. An international jury will select the winning proposal by January of next year.

The museum plans to exhibit approximately ten major bronze sculptures by Picasso in a public garden located behind its 17th-century hotel particulier in the historic Marais district. The Paris institution, which holds the largest collection of Picasso's sculptures, comprising around 350 pieces, also intends to transform a corridor adjacent to the square into an 800 sq. m exhibition hall. Additionally, parts of the historic building will be renovated to accommodate a bookstore and a cafeteria.

This €55 million initiative is a collaboration involving the artist's family, the city of Paris, and the Don Quixote Foundation. The latter is a philanthropic organization co-founded by Dutch aristocrat and venture capital executive Rolly van Rappard, according to Cécile Debray, director of the Musée National Picasso-Paris. The museum has already secured €40 million for the project by casting and selling four bronzes to the Dutch foundation. These works will join pieces by Alberto Giacometti, Louise Bourgeois, Henry Moore, and others at the new Don Quixote Pavilion and Gardens at the Rijksmuseum. Announced last January, the Don Quixote Foundation will contribute €60 million to develop the garden and provide a substantial number of sculptures on long-term loan.

Previously, Picasso's family had not agreed to posthumous bronze casts, but they reversed their decision to support this project, Paloma Picasso stated at a press conference. The four bronzes cast and sold to the Don Quixote Foundation are: La chèvre (the goat, 1952 ), a life-size statue displayed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York; La guenon et son petit (Female baboon and child, 1951 ); a Woman's head and bust ( 1930 ), from his time at the manor of Boisgeloup in Normandy; and Petite fille sautant à la corde (Little girl jumping rope, 1950 ), created during his ceramic experiments in Vallauris on the French Riviera.

Many of Picasso's sculptures feature assemblages of found materials, crafted with inventiveness and humor. For the little girl sculpture, he utilized a wicker basket, a cake pan, and children's shoes. The baboon's face was made from two of his son's car toys. Glass bottles formed the goat's udder, and a palm leaf covered with terracotta and plaster served as her back.

The museum has also cast four statues for its own garden through the Swiss foundry Saint Gallen, including the two-meter-high Femme au jardin (Woman at the garden, 1929-30 ). This work, an homage to poet Guillaume Apollinaire, recreates the myth of Apollo and Daphne, conceived during Picasso's brief period of Surrealist inspiration. It represents his most significant piece designed in painted metal, created with the assistance of his friend Julio Gonzalez. Intended for Apollinaire's tombstone, it was deemed too modernist and remained at Boisgeloup.

Picasso designed several public monuments, yet the city of Paris, where he arrived at 19 years old, currently displays none of his statues publicly, apart from a small sculpture of a woman's head in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés square.

Source: The Art Newspaper

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