“If all the ways I have been along
were marked on a map and joined up
with a line, it might represent a Minotaur.“

(Picasso, 1934)

The archaic influences in the art history are one of the basic themes of my research. I was so happy that I could see the exhibition “Prehistory, a Modern Enigma” at the Center Pompidou in Paris on 30 May 2019. This theme continues in Athens. The Museum of Cycladic Art is organizing a rare and original exhibition entitled Picasso and Antiquity. I visited this exhibition on 13 September 2019. I took some photos at exhibition. Come with me and see my photos and read the text of curators of this interesting exhibition.

Clay female figurine, Allegedly from Amari ca. 1400-1300 BC – Clay female figurine, Gortyn, rurar villa at Kannia ca. 1750-1600 BC – Pablo Picasso | King of Athens

Female figurines – Detail of exhibition

Detail of exhibition

Picasso’s compositions—ceramics and drawings created between the 1920s and 1960s—come from foreign foundations, museums, and collections, including Fundación Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso para el Arte (FABA), Musée National Picasso – Paris, Musée Picasso Antibes, Museo Picasso Μálaga, Museum Berggruen (Berlin) and private collections.

Detail of exhibition

Among the most interesting “pairs” presented in this exhibition are: the white clay Centaur with incised and slip-painted decoration, which Picasso created at Vallauris on 3 January 1953, conversing here with the unique tenth-century BC Proto-Geometric Centaur figurine from Lefkandi in Euboea and a sixth-century BC Cypro-Archaic Centaur. Or Picasso’s Blind Minotaur Guided by a Little Girl by the Sea (Boisgeloup, 22 September 1934), paired with the Κilling of the Minotaur by Theseus on a Late Classical Red Figure calyx krater (340–330 BC) from the National Archaeological Museum or the Torso of a Minotaur statue, a Roman copy of an Early Classical prototype.

Clay Centaur figurine from Lefkandi in Euboea, 10th century BC – Pablo Picasso | White clay Centaur, Vallauris, 3 January 1953

Bulls – Detail of exhibition

Clay Centaur figurine from Lefkandi in Euboea, 10th century BC – Pablo Picasso | White clay Centaur, Vallauris, 3 January 1953

Unlike his unique paintings, the great twentieth-century artist’s drawings and ceramics are little known to the wider public. These are closely related to antiquity, inspired by the Creto-Mycenaean, Greek, and ancient Mediterranean civilizations in general. This exhibition reveals a world the artist carried within himself. It showcases antiquities that he might have seen in the ancient lands of the Mediterranean, but also in European museums, in the books he read, or during his encounters with Christian Zervos and Jean Cocteau.

Bulls – Detail of exhibition

Κilling of the Minotaur by Theseus on a Late Classical Red Figure calyx krater (340–330 BC)

Pablo Picasso | Blind Minotaur Guided by a Little Girl by the Sea, Boisgeloup, 22 September 1934

Bulls – Detail of exhibition

Clay owls – Detail of exhibition

Clay pigeons – Detail of exhibition

Owls – Detail of exhibition – Right: Pablo Picasso | The Owl, Vallauris, 12 December 1952

Fragment of a marble grave stele with a grooting scene, 4th century BC – Pablo Picasso’s work

Detail of exhibition

Fishes – Detail of exhibition

The element that binds both ceramics, old and new, and Picasso’s illustrations derived from the antique (the Three Graces or Aristophanes’s Lysistrata) has to do with form and design, and not just iconography. Of particular relevance is the line, whether in drawings from the 1920s and 1930s or the lines traced on ceramics and reminiscent of Attic Red Figure vases, for example. «Picasso and Antiquity. Line and Clay» exhibition demonstrates the force of Picasso’s imaginary, yet strongly felt Antiquity and the lasting spell that objects from the past cast on us.

Detail of exhibition

Torso from a statue of the Minotaur belonging to a group with Theseus – Roman copy of a 5th century BC prototype

Picasso wearing a bull’s head intended for bullfighter’s training, La Californie, Cannes, 1959 (Photo by Edward Quinn)

Text from the website of Museum of Cycladic Art.