Picasso 1932 and a great dinner!

Tuesday October 10 was another mild day with sun and cloud. High about 18C. We had a late morning coffee at Strada and headed to the Picasso Museum on the first day of a new exhibit called Picasso 1932: Année Érotique.

Alain at one end of the courtyard in our apartment complex

Swans in the Seine

Notre Dame

The Picasso museum is located in the Hôtel Salé which was built between 1656-1660 by a salt tax collector, hence the name. It has known numerous owners and undergone major alterations since the 17th century. It has housed the Musée Picasso since 1985. It underwent a major restoration between 2009 and October 2014, when the museum reopened.

Poster for exhibit

The exhibit Picasso 1932: Erotic Year focused on an exceptional year of the life of Pablo Picasso. Each room dealt chronologically with paintings, drawings and documents from January to December 1932. It was the year he went public with pictures of his lover and Muse, Marie-Thérese Walter. He had met her in 1927 when she was 17 and he was 45. Their secret affair continued until 1936 and she had a daughter with Picasso. Picasso was still living with his wife Olga Khokhlova during 1932, while he was painting many pictures of Marie-Thérese.

1932 has often been referred to in the art world as Picasso's "year of wonders". He produced more than 300 works of art in 1932 and the exhibition featured over 100 of them. The Picasso Museum called it an erotic year as eroticism was a driving force in his painting.

His pictures of Marie-Thérese were very sensual-- she had blond hair and her flesh was usually painted in violet. There are many paintings of her seated in a red armchair. Each room of the exhibit was labelled with the month of that year. In 1932, even during the depression, Picasso had two successful art exhibits- one in Paris and one in Zurich. His first retrospective, held at the Galeries Georges Petit had 238 works-- over 100 sold. The exhibit then travelled to the Kunsthaus Zurich. Picasso was accompanied by Olga and his son Paul and there were many photos of the couple in Zurich.

La Lecture

Le Rêve

La Dormeuse au miroir (Marie-Thérese)

Femme au fauteuil rouge

Nature morte:buste, couple et palette

Compotier et guitare

Jeune fille devant un miroir

Nu au fauteuil noir

Picasso had a residence and studio in Boisgeloup in Normandy where he painted many of the works shown in this exhibit. He also did some beautiful paintings of Boisgeloup in the rain.

Boisgeloup sous la pluie

Nu sur la plage

Nu couché

Alain at the top of the stairway

Boisgeloup sous la pluie

Le Repos

Femme nue dans un fauteuil rouge

Femme nue couchée

Femme assise près d'une fenêtre

La Sieste

La Crucifixion

Femme allongée, joueur de flûte

Chair designed for Museum opening in 1985 by Diego Giacometti

Brassai- portrait of Picasso 1932

Bathers and rescuers were also a theme of some of the 1932 paintings and drawings.

Le Sauvetage

Le Sauvetage/Silhouettes

After the Picasso 1932 Exhibit, we went to the basement to visit a number of rooms with highlights from each of the media that Picasso worked in-- painting, sculpture, ceramics, stage design and costumes, engraving, posters and of course, drawing. It is estimated that in the 91 years of his life he managed to produce around 70,000 works! He was always working, switching from drawing to painting, engraving, sculpture and constantly crossing the boundaries between art forms. There were also a number of photographs taken of Picasso.

David Douglas Duncan (b. 1916) Pablo Picasso mangeant un poisson dont l'arête sera moulée dans l'argile, dans l'atelier de La Californie, Cannes, avril 1957

Picasso also collaborated on costumes and sets for a number of productions. He was invited in 1916 to collaborate on Parade by Serge de Diaghilev. He designed the sets, costumes and stage curtain.

This photo is from the video done of the 2007 version of Parade by Europa Danse

There was a wall of beautiful photos of the lover that followed Marie-Thérese-- the photographer Dora Maar.

Tête de femme no. 1, Portrait de Dora Maar, Paris January-June 1939

Tête de femmes no. 4 Portrait de Dora Maar, Paris, April-May 1939

There were examples of his sculptures as well.

Tête de Femme- Boisgeloup 1931-32

After the museum, we had lunch at La Petite Plates around the corner from the Museum. I had a gorgeous salad with chèvre and honey on toast and Alain and Grace had duck and cheese tartine.

Chevre salad

Grace and duck and cheese tartan

Alain with his café

We stopped in a nearby shoe store to admire some beautiful shoes. It turned out the shoemaker was originally from Toronto, though has lived in Europe for many years. We had a nice chat.

Zoe Lee shoes--amazing designs

We wandered in the Haut Marais and then crossed the Seine to go to our second event at Shakespeare and Company-- always so beautiful in the early evening.

The event at Shakespeare and Company featured Nathan Hill, the author of the best-selling book The Nix. It was his last stop on a one and a half year book tour!!! The discussion and reading were excellent. Hill is from Iowa and now lives in Naples, Florida. It took him 10 years to finish the novel, but only a few weeks for a publisher to pick it up. It has now been translated into 30 languages and optioned for a limited TV series directed by J.J. Abrams, staring Meryl Streep. They are still looking for a network. The novel takes place in 1968, 1988 and 2011. Hill had been teaching and had written some short stories prior to starting work on the novel. Definitely going on my to read list!!

After the reading, we crossed the Seine again and met our friend Shalabh at La Belle Hortense, in the Marais, for a pre-dinner drink. Shalabh lives two doors down from Alain and I, in our building, and his work took him to Paris for the last month. While the front room at the wine bar is very busy, the back room has a few quiet tables where one can chat.

At La Belle Hortense with a lovely bottle of Bordeaux

We then headed around the corner to Tavline, a new Israeli restaurant that I had read about. It is a small place and they do just two sittings for dinner, one at 7:30 p.m. and one at 9:30 p.m. We were there for the second setting.

Outside of Tavline (picture taken during the day earlier this week)

We ordered a selection of all the appetizers, which were served in beautiful small decorated dishes. Amazing flavour and tastes. We then had four main courses of a lamb dish, fish, shakshouka and a large fattoush salad. Wow, what a feast!!! No room for desert. No pressure to hurry and we were there for over two hours.