Portrait of Suzanne Bloch

Portrait of Suzanne Bloch is a painting executed by the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso in Paris in 1904, towards the end of his blue period. The subject, Suzanne Bloch, was a singer known for her Wagner interpretations, and the sister of the violinist Henri Bloch.

Suzanne Bloch

A luminary in the Parisian sets frequented by Picasso at the beginning of the 20th century, Suzanne Bloch was a Wagnerian singer and the sister of the violinist Henri Bloch. She was introduced to the Spanish artist by the French poet Max Jacob, in 1904, and she sat for a portrait by Picasso in his studio at 13 rue Ravignan in Paris, between the late spring and early summer of that year. A pen and ink sketch heightened with gouache, and signed and dated by Picasso, preceded the oil painting; it is now conserved at the Neubury Coray collection, in Ascona, Switzerland.

Picasso's portrait

The portrait in oils has been described by Luiz Marques, professor of art history at Unicamp, as exemplary of "the blue period, to which it fully belongs." It has been called the last important work of the blue period, although Palau i Fabre says that it is "difficult to date and determine the stage of transition from one period to the other—which in any case was not a sudden shift but a gently nuanced, though intermittent, progress". In a similar vein, Denys Chevalier has written: "Any attempt ... to date the blue period too precisely can only lead to errors".

Suzanne Bloch

Suzanne Bloch (born in Geneva in 1907 - died in New York in 2002) was a Swiss-American musician and an influential pioneer of Early Music Revival during the 20th century.

Biography

Suzanne Bloch was born in Geneva in 1907 into the family of composer Ernest Bloch. The family moved to New York in 1906 when Ernst Bloch took on teaching and conducting responsibilities there. She went to Paris to study music with Nadia Boulanger in 1925, and decided to become a lute player after hearing an early-music concert. She went on to study music in Paris and Berlin, and she met Arnold Dolmetsch in England in 1933. Dolmetsch sold her a lute from 1600 that he had restored himself. In 1935 she performed at the Dolmetsch Early Music Festival in Haslemere, and soon afterward returned to New York, where she began her concert career.

Here career as a lutenist was cut short in 1950's by repetitive stress syndrome brought on by the modern heavily built Hermann Hauser lutes that she played, but her condition allowed her to continue to play early keyboards and sing. She was one of the founding members of the Lute Society of America in the 1970s.

Picasso's Blue Period

The Blue Period (Spanish: Período Azul) is a term used to define the works produced by Spanish painter Pablo Picasso between 1901 and 1904 when he painted essentially monochromatic paintings in shades of blue and blue-green, only occasionally warmed by other colors. These somber works, inspired by Spain and painted in Barcelona and Paris, are now some of his most popular works, although he had difficulty selling them at the time.

This period's starting point is uncertain; it may have begun in Spain in the spring of 1901 or in Paris in the second half of the year. In choosing austere color and sometimes doleful subject matter—prostitutes, beggars and drunks are frequent subjects—Picasso was influenced by a journey through Spain and by the suicide of his friend; Carlos Casagemas took his life at the L’Hippodrome Café in Paris, France by shooting himself in the right temple on February 17, 1901. Although Picasso himself later recalled, "I started painting in blue when I learned of Casagemas's death", art historian Hélène Seckel has written: "While we might be right to retain this psychologizing justification, we ought not lose sight of the chronology of events: Picasso was not there when Casagemas committed suicide in Paris ... When Picasso returned to Paris in May, he stayed in the studio of his departed friend, where he worked for several more weeks to prepare his exhibition for Vollard". The works Picasso painted for his show at Ambroise Vollard's gallery that summer were generally characterized by a "dazzling palette and exuberant subject matter". Picasso's psychological state worsened as 1901 continued.

Pablo Picasso

Pablo Ruiz y Picasso, also known as Pablo Picasso (/pɪˈkɑːsoʊ, -ˈkæsoʊ/;Spanish: [ˈpaβlo piˈkaso]; 25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973), was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, stage designer, poet and playwright who spent most of his adult life in France. As one of the greatest and most influential artists of the 20th century, he is known for co-founding the Cubist movement, the invention of constructed sculpture, the co-invention of collage, and for the wide variety of styles that he helped develop and explore. Among his most famous works are the proto-Cubist Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), and Guernica (1937), a portrayal of the Bombing of Guernica by the German and Italian airforces at the behest of the Spanish nationalist government during the Spanish Civil War.

Picasso, Henri Matisse and Marcel Duchamp are regarded as the three artists who most defined the revolutionary developments in the plastic arts in the opening decades of the 20th century, responsible for significant developments in painting, sculpture, printmaking and ceramics.

Brigham Young University Museum of Art

The Brigham Young University Museum of Art, located in Provo, Utah, United States is the university's primary art museum and is one of the best attended university-campus art museums in the United States. The museum, which had been discussed for more than fifty years, opened in a 10,000-square-foot (930 m²) space in October 1993 with a large exhibit on the Etruscans. The museum is an integral part of the BYU College of Fine Arts and Communications and provides opportunities for students across the college and the university's campus.

History

After breaking ground two years prior, the museum opened in October 1993 as a location to house BYU's extensive collection of more than 17,000 pieces of art which, due to a lack of space, had never been able to be displayed permanently. The lack of a permanent home had resulted in damage to some of the collection and the loss of more than 900 pieces of art.

According to a 2004 survey, the museum ranked first in attendance among university campus art museums with 334,774 visitors. Among all art museums, the museum comes in 31st in attendance out of 157 member art museums from the United States, Canada and Mexico. The museum's philosophy of reaching out to the students and the community has been cited as one of the reasons for its success to date. In addition to having the largest university museum attendance, the museum also has the highest level of student attendance because its staff works closely with faculty to incorporate the museum into school curriculum.