Art: Picasso in Mexico

A cubist still life was held at the border for special examination, on the chance that it might be a plan of the Panama Canal. Rumors flew that five other pictures had been lost. Opening dates were postponed, postponed again. Half of the gala invitations sent out never reached their addresses. But last week the curtain finally went up on Mexico City’s No. i art event of the season: an 83-picture retrespective exhibition of the work of Pablo Picasso, the melancholy, anarchic 62-year-old Spaniard whom many consider the greatest living artist.

The Mexico City Picasso show was gathered by the town’s newest art association, Sociedad de Arte Moderno (Modern Art Society). In the Society’s rented gallery on the Paseo de la Reforma, all kinds of Picassos were hung—from the posterish Harlequin to the Seated Woman (see cut), an example of Picasso’s attempt to capture a figure from several angles simultaneously. Dropped at the last minute was a plan to show a large reproduction of Picasso’s famed Guernica mural, a graphically violent protest against Franco’s atrocities during the Spanish Civil War.

Most Mexican laymen, like most laymen everywhere, were chiefly attracted by such evidence of Picasso’s great skill—when he wishes to be conservative—as La Toilette (see cut), a serene, informally classic figure piece painted in 1905. Picasso’s endless experimentalism was received as variously as it is everywhere. And the Mexican professionals who spoke out about the show were anything but cordial in their temper.

Mexico’s famed muralist Diego Rivera, who recently decorated the walls of Mexico City’s swank Ciro’s nightclub with luscious, careless, postcardish nudes, stayed away from the Picasso opening. But he had an anti-Picasso blast ready for the first reporter who came his way. Roared he: “The Society’s role is clear: to serve those trying to preserve European cultural . . . domination. . . . Behind this show are dealers. . . . This is proved by the fact that [the Society’s] activities were begun with a non-American artist of overwhelming prestige.”

Just where Pablo Ruiz y Picasso is today, no one outside France can tell. Wherever he was, Picasso doubtless cared little what was said about him in Mexico City. He has always been personally scornful of the art markets which have made him one of the highest-priced figures in modern painting. Said he once: “Museums are just a lot of lies, and the people who make art their business are mostly impostors.” One museum has even gone out of its way to quote that remark. That was Manhattan’s Museum of Modern Art, chief overseer of Mexico City’s Picasso show.