{"id":30515,"date":"2025-04-18T15:14:09","date_gmt":"2025-04-18T15:14:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/30515\/"},"modified":"2025-04-18T15:14:09","modified_gmt":"2025-04-18T15:14:09","slug":"picasso-the-spanish-painters-enduring-relationship-with-asia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/30515\/","title":{"rendered":"Picasso: The Spanish painter’s enduring relationship with Asia"},"content":{"rendered":"

PABLO PICASSO\u2019S artworks hang in galleries thousands of kilometres away from his original hometown of Malaga, with several key pieces now adorning the walls of Asian collectors.<\/strong><\/p>\n

His posthumous popularity has been steadily growing in the Asia market, with recent winning bids of his artworks going east.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cBuste de femme\u201d (1953), a portrait of Picasso\u2019s partner and muse Fran\u00e7oise Gilot, was put up for auction for the first time in 40 years at Sotheby\u2019s in London last month. It sold for \u00a34.3 million to an Asian private collector.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Picasso\u2019s \u201cClaude et Paloma\u201d also sold for $28.2 million to a Chinese conglomerate Dalian Wanda Group in 2013 in New York.\u00a0<\/p>\n

READ MORE: <\/strong>Reflections:\u00a0A groundbreaking exhibition at the Alhambra in Spain\u2019s Granada where Picasso meets Jeff Koons<\/a><\/p>\n

Although he never travelled to Asia himself, people there knew of the Spanish-born artist as early as the 1910s. He mingled with famous Chinese influences throughout his life, including renowned Chinese education reformer Cai Yuanpei, the \u2018Picasso of China\u2019 Zhang Daqian, and Ming painter and poet Tang Yin.<\/p>\n

Picasso also drew inspiration for some of his artworks from the region. \u2018Massacre in Korea\u2019 painted in 1951, is thought to represent his critiquing response to America\u2019s involvement in the Korean War and the resulting violence.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Picasso Pablo\u2019s critique of the Korean War.<\/p>\n

Musashino Art University professor Masayuki Tanaka said Picasso had a connection with Japanese painter Taro Okamoto.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cPicasso told Okamoto that he possessed several Japanese woodblock prints, and that they were not refined ones, but earlier, more primitive ones,\u201d Tanaka said.<\/p>\n

One can see Tang Yin\u2019s influence in the structure and simplicity of the trees in Picasso\u2019s landscape painting view of the French Riviera town Juan-les-Pins.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Famous Asian artists have in turn been inspired by Picasso. Simon Fujiwara\u2019s \u201cWho vs Who vs Who? A Picture of a Massacre\u201d created last year, references Picasso\u2019s Massacre in Korea and Guernica.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"guernica\"AT WORK: Picasso painting Guernica<\/p>\n

Chinese ink art master Qi Baishi created his own interpretation of Picasso\u2019s famous dove images in 1952, titled \u201cPeace Dove.\u201d The dove, often seen as a universal symbol of peace, features alongside a vase and lotus flowers in Baishi\u2019s work. The Chinese words for lotus (he) and vase (ping) make heping \u2014 the Chinese word for \u201cpeace\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"\"Qi Baishi echoes Picasso\u2019s use of the dove as a symbol of peace.<\/p>\n

The \u2018Picasso for Asia: A conversation\u2019 at M+ Museum in Hong Kong, is currency showcasing more than 60 Picasso works, on loan from the Mus\u00e9e National Picasso-Paris. The works hang alongside 130 from Asian artists continuing an artistic dialogue.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s not the first time Picasso\u2019s works have been exhibited in Asia.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As early as 1913, a local Japanese art journal reproduced his 1909 cubist painting \u201cWoman with a Mandolin.\u201d Six years later, his works were shown in China.\u00a0<\/p>\n

More recently, in 2010, Hong Kong hosted \u2018Modern Masters,\u2019 an exhibition dedicated to modern and impressionist art.\u00a0Former Sotheby\u2019s International Chair Patti Wong, said this exhibit was a \u2018launch pad\u2019 to introduce private sales to buyers in mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The first painting sold in the exhibition was a Picasso.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Advertising for the latest Picasso exhibition at Hong Kong\u2019s M+ Museum.<\/p>\n

British auction house Christie\u2019s sold Picasso\u2019s first artwork on the ground in China in 2013. \u201cHomme assis\u201d sold to a private collector in Shanghai for $1.5 million.\u00a0<\/p>\n

More than 300,000 visitors passed through the doors of Beijing exhibit \u2018Picasso \u2013 Birth of Genius\u2019 in 2018, demonstrating the artist\u2019s popularity with the general public too.\u00a0 A few years earlier, more than 300,000 people also viewed the 226 works brought to South Korea.<\/p>\n

\"\"Visitors flocking to see the new Picasso exhibition at M+ Museum in Hong Kong. Credit: Juni Yu<\/p>\n

READ MORE: <\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PABLO PICASSO\u2019S artworks hang in galleries thousands of kilometres away from his original hometown of Malaga, with several…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":30516,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5312],"tags":[2606,2766,2000,299,18104,8626,18180,104,18106],"class_list":{"0":"post-30515","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-spain","8":"tag-art","9":"tag-culture","10":"tag-eu","11":"tag-europe","12":"tag-news-spain","13":"tag-newspaper","14":"tag-picasso","15":"tag-spain","16":"tag-the-olive-press"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114359622932072419","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30515"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30515\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}