Picasso Lydia and Friends, Vol. 4 Opening March 16

Les Yeux du Monde is pleased to present

Picasso Lydia and Friends, Vol. 4

16 March – 21 April 2019

From March 16 – 21 April 2019, Les Yeux du Monde presents Picasso Lydia and Friends, Vol. 4. This show is organized to honor the memory and scholarship of the well-known Picasso scholar and former acclaimed and beloved professor of Modern art at the University of Virginia, Lydia Csato Gasman. There will be an opening reception on Saturday, March 16 from 4 – 6 p.m. (free and open to the public) and a Lunch with Artists on Wednesday March 20 from noon to 1 p.m. ($15, reservations required).

Picasso Prints will feature choice several prints of Picasso’s great love and muse, Marie-Thérèse Walter, who Professor Gasman met and befriended in the early 1970s. It will also feature little known prints Picasso did in 1936 of animals and insects to illustrate Histoire Naturelle, a massive treatise on animals by Georges-Louis Leclerc, comte de Buffon (originally published in forty-four volumes between 1745 and 1804). Tellingly Picasso’s choices of creatures—the bull, the pigeon, the horse and more—take on great significance in works such as Minotauromachia (1935) and Guernica (1937), in which Marie-Thérèse symbolized purity and light against the opposing forces of darkness—bulls or minotaurs. Set against the backdrop of the tensions of Franco and Hitler, even more crucial are these seemingly naive illustrations. They also shed light on the period of Picasso’s life that Gasman was most interested in and known for de-coding—the years marked by Picasso’s time with Marie-Therese and the subsequent war years. Among the first manuscripts to be published from the Archives are interviews Gasman conducted with Marie-Thérèse and the correspondence that ensued.

The artists to be represented in Picasso, Lydia and Friends, Vol. 4 are friends or colleagues of Gasman’s—William Bennett, Anne Chesnut, Dean Dass, Sanda Iliescu, Megan Marlatt, David Summers and Russ Warren. The exhibition will be the backdrop for a fundraiser and auction on Saturday, March 30 to benefit the work of the non-profit Lydia Csato Gasman Archives, whose mission it is to preserve and disseminate the scholarship and ideas of Professor Gasman to a wider public. Call 434-973-5566 or email LYDMGallery@gmail.com for more information and to reserve tickets for the gala ($100 per person and 100% tax deductible). The works in the auction will be posted online at www.LydiaGasmanArchives.org and on Gasman’s facebook page for those who do not attend the auction to see and also place absentee bids.

Gallery hours are Thursday through Saturday 1 – 5 and by appointment. Consult LYDM.co for more information.