Alexander Calder and Pablo Picasso are two of the foremost figures in the history of twentieth-century art. This touring exhibition, which debuted last year at the Musée national Picasso-Paris and is coming to the High this summer, presents more than one hundred paintings, sculptures, and works on paper spanning Calder’s and Picasso’s careers that reveal the radical innovation and enduring influence of their art.

Conceived by the artists’ grandsons, Bernard Ruiz-Picasso and Alexander S. C. Rower, and organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the exhibition focuses on the artists’ exploration of the void, or absence of space, which both defined from the figure through to abstraction.

Calder’s early wire figures, paintings, drawings, and revolutionary nonobjective mobiles, stabiles, and standing mobiles are integrated throughout the exhibition with profoundly inventive works by Picasso in every media. The juxtapositions are insightful, surprising, and challenging, demonstrating the striking innovations these great artists introduced through their ceaseless reexamination of form, line, and space.

 

Banner Image: Alexander Calder, Untitled, 1956, sheet metal, wire, and paint, Calder Foundation, New York. © 2021 Calder Foundation, New York/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo by Tom Powel Imaging, courtesy of Calder Foundation, New York/Art Resource, New York.