Picasso: A Dialog with the Americas

June 6 - September 20, 2023

Art Museum of the Americas
201 18th Street Northwest, Washington, DC 20006

Six days after the death of Pablo Ruiz Picasso (b. 1881, d. 1973) at the age of 91, the OAS General Assembly adopted the Tribute to Pablo Picasso resolution, recognizing his "enormous influence on the contemporary art of the Americas," decreeing that a tribute exhibition be held at the OAS with work representing each member state. The show opened on October 25, 1973 (what would have been the artist's 92nd birthday) and ran through November 11 of that year. It included 24 works representing the 24 nations that were then OAS members, highlighting contemporary trends that could be traced back to Picasso. Luminaries such as M.P. Alladin (Trinidad and Tobago), Brother Everald Brown (Jamaica), José Luis Cuevas (Mexico), Lola Ferná=ndez (Costa Rica), Joseph Jean-Gilles (Haiti), David Manzur (Colombia), Armando Morales (Nicaragua), and Maria Luisa Pacheco (Bolivia) were featured.

To mark the 50th anniversary of Tribute to Picasso, we present here a more selective series of works that touch on Picasso, whether in composition, aesthetic, or simply as a tip of the hat.

Picasso's Aubade, presented here as a significant work of the Inter-American Development Bank collection, can be viewed as a key work of the German Occupation period, as well as a play on the traditional serenade theme. The work's claustrophobic setting conveys wartime imprisonment and isolation, while the bird in the seated woman's stomach represents an internal hope to escape from demoralizing conditions.