Picasso & Modern British Art
15 February – 15 July 2012 
Tate Britain, Linbury Galleries
Open daily 10.00 – 18.00 and until 22.00 every Friday 
For public information number please print 020 7887 8888

In February 2012 Tate Britain will stage the first exhibition to explore Pablo Picasso’s lifelong connections with Britain. Picasso & Modern British Artwill examine Picasso’s evolving critical reputation here and British artists’ responses to his work. The exhibition will explore Picasso’s rise in Britain as a figure of both controversy and celebrity, tracing the ways in which his work was exhibited and collected here during his lifetime, and demonstrating that the British engagement with Picasso and his art was much deeper and more varied than generally has been appreciated.

Pablo Picasso originated many of the most significant developments of twentieth-century art. This exhibition will examine his enormous impact on British modernism, through seven exemplary figures for whom he proved an important stimulus: Duncan Grant, Wyndham Lewis, Ben Nicholson, Henry Moore, Francis Bacon, Graham Sutherland and David Hockney. It will be presented in an essentially chronological order, with rooms documenting the exhibiting and collecting of Picasso’s art in Britain alternating with those showcasing individual British artists’ responses to his work. Picasso & Modern British Art will comprise over 150 works from major public and private collections around the world, including over 60 paintings by Picasso.

Picasso & Modern British Art will include key Cubist works such as Head of a Man with a Moustache 1912 (Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris) which was seen in Britain before the First World War, when Cubism was first introduced to a British public through Roger Fry’s two Post-Impressionist exhibitions. It will also include Picasso’s Man with a Clarinet 1911-12 (Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid) and Weeping Woman1937 (Tate), works which were acquired by the two most notable British collectors of Picasso, Douglas Cooper and Roland Penrose, both of whom were to become intimately associated with the artist and his reputation. Further key works loaned from public and private collections across the world will include Reading at a Table 1934 (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, US), Women of Algiers (Version ‘O’), 1955 (Private Collection) and Still Life with Mandolin, 1924 (Stedelijk Museum, Netherlands) among others.

While many British artists have responded to Picasso’s influence, those represented in this exhibition have been selected to illustrate both the variety and vitality of these responses over a period of more than seventy years. This is a rare opportunity to see such work alongside those works by Picasso that, in many cases, are documented as having made a particular impact on the artist concerned; in other cases, they have been chosen as excellent examples of a stylistic affinity between Picasso and the relevant British artist. For example, David Hockney is said to have visited Picasso’s major Tate exhibition (1960) eight times, starting a life-long obsession with the artist.  A selection of various Hockney homages to Picasso will be shown. In addition Francis Bacon's Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion 1944 (Tate) will be compared with Picasso’s paintings based on figures on the beach at Dinard which first inspired Bacon to take up painting seriously.

The exhibition will look at the time Picasso spent in London in 1919 when he worked on the scenery and costumes for Diaghilev’s production of The Three-Cornered Hat. It will assess the significance of his political status in Britain, from the Guernica tour in 1938-9 to the artist’s appearance at the 1950 Peace Congress in Sheffield. The final section will also consider the artist’s post-war reputation, from the widespread hostility provoked by the 1945-6 V&A exhibition which re-ignited many of the fierce debates about modern art that first raged before the First World War, to the phenomenally successful survey of his career at the Tate in 1960.

After Tate Britain, the exhibition will tour to the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh. Picasso & Modern British Art is devised by James Beechey with additional contributions from Professor Christopher Green (Courtauld) and Richard Humphreys. It is curated at Tate Britain by Chris Stephens, Curator (Modern British Art) & Head of Displays, Tate Britain, assisted by Helen Little, Assistant Curator, Tate Britain.

English National Ballet at Tate Britain 
27 February – 4 March 2012

Next March English National Ballet will take up residency in Tate Britain's Duveen galleries to celebrate the opening of the major exhibition Picasso & Modern British Art and the Company’s Beyond Ballets Russes season. Inspired by Picasso's visionary costume and set design work with the Ballets Russes, this collaboration will offer a rare insight into how English National Ballet rehearses repertoire and creates commissions. The climax of the residency will be world premiere performances of three newly commissioned ballets at Late at Tate on 2 March 2012, based on works from Picasso & Modern British Art. These pieces will be performed alongside David Dawson’s Faun(e).

During the residency week (27 February – 4 March 2012) the Duveen galleries will be brought to life with sights such as the full Company of 67 dancers taking their morning ballet class along a barre stretching the length of the North Duveen Gallery and rehearsing pieces including The Rite of Spring and Firebird. There will also be workshops for people of all ages to join, as well as talks, discussions and demonstrations highlighting the links between dance and the visual arts, especially in the legacy of the Ballets Russes.

English National Ballet’s residency at Tate Britain is an extraordinary opportunity to witness dance and visual art together, and explore how Picasso was so enthused by the great ballet Company. Picasso worked closely with Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes from 1916, designing several other ballets including Parade and Pulcinella.

He frequently sketched the dancers in rehearsal and off stage and married one of the company’s dancers, Olga Khokhlova. In 1919 he came to London with the Ballets Russes to create the designs for Le Tricorne and this visit to London will be feature in Picasso & Modern British Art at Tate Britain. Parade and Tricorne are both in English National Ballet’s repertoire and Picasso himself oversaw the creation of the sets and costumes. This history has inspired the collaboration between Tate Britain and English National Ballet.

English National Ballet’s residency programme at Tate Britain celebrates the legacy of the Ballets Russes alongside the Company’s Beyond Ballets Russes season, performed at the Coliseum in March 2012. Beyond Ballets Russes includes the World Premiere of a new production of Firebird, inspired by Picasso’s work, as well as MacMillan’s The Rite of Spring and David Dawson’s Faun(e) alongside its inspiration - Nijinsky’s originalL’après-midi d’un faune.

Picasso & Modern British Art at Tate Britain is the first exhibition to explore Pablo Picasso’s lifelong connections with Britain. The exhibition will examine Picasso’s evolving critical reputation here and British artists’ responses to his work. It will investigate Picasso’s rise in Britain as a figure of both controversy and celebrity, tracing the ways in which his work was exhibited and collected here during his lifetime, and demonstrating that the British engagement with Picasso and his art was much deeper and more varied than generally has been appreciated.

English National Ballet at Tate Britain, Monday 27 February – Sunday 4 March; Late at Tate at Tate Britain, 3 March 2012 ; Beyond Ballets Russes at the London Coliseum, 22 March – 1 April 2012; Picasso & Modern British Art at Tate Britain, 15 February – 15 July 2012