For Immediate Release

June 26, 2023

Media contacts:
Jana Brady, Mississippi Museum of Art
jbrady@msmuseumart.org, 601-651-3822

MISSISSIPPI MUSEUM OF ART PRESENTS

Picasso Landscapes: Out of Bounds

First major American traveling exhibition devoted to the legendary artist’s inventive
landscape portraiture on view November 11, 2023, through March 3, 2024

Jackson, MS…The Mississippi Museum of Art (MMA) will present Picasso Landscapes: Out of
Bounds, an exhibition that will explore the artist’s lifelong fascination with landscape by
spotlighting his innovative reimagination of this traditional genre.

On view from November 11, 2023, through March 3, 2024, Picasso Landscapes: Out of
Bounds, features 30 paintings and sculptures spanning Picasso’s full career. From his earliest
days in art school until the year before his death, landscape meditated his perception of the
world and jump-started his creative evolution.

Within Picasso’s vast oeuvre,

landscapes have received the least
scholarly attention. Yet to ignore
Picasso’s landscapes is to omit a
crucial dimension of his achievement.
Landscapes afforded Picasso the
opportunity to reflect upon his personal
and cultural milieu while also engaging
with art historical traditions. This
exhibition will position the genre of
landscape as a creative lodestar in his
life, inspiring major breakthroughs in his
oeuvre and seismic shifts in the
painting canon. Picasso Landscapes
also charts the artist’s changing sense
of place over decades of travel and
relocation, spotlighting Picasso’s
reactions to the modern city, wartime
occupation, and the industrialization of rural France.

Betsy Bradley, director of the Mississippi Museum of Art, said, “MMA is proud to join in on the
commemoration of Pablo Picasso’s death fifty years ago. This is the first solo Picasso
exhibition to come to our state. We are thrilled by the opportunity to share these masterpieces
with Jackson and visitors from around the world.”
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As early as 1900, his canvases began telegraphing the powerful forces of nature in contrast
with urban growth across Spain, particularly in Málaga, Madrid, Barcelona, and Horta de Ebro
(pictured above). The destruction and endurance of French culture define the artist’s
cityscapes of Nazi-occupied Paris during World War II. Picasso’s grand Côte d’Azur
landscapes, completed at the end of his career, reveal the rapid buildout of a region where, a
few decades earlier, he had captured the lives of peasants and laborers. The devastation of
the Anthropocene in the political rise of the ecological movement in France coincided with
Picasso’s last landscape of 1972, an immense work that reads like an epitaph to both his
creative and social life.

Classical landscapes of the seventeenth

century were important touchstones for
Picasso; his ambitious, large-scale
canvases adopted the formal structure of
the ideal vista articulated by Claude
Lorrain, and Nicholas Poussin. Picasso
often used landscape painting to
interrogate the work of Impressionists and
Post-Impressionists, including Pierre-
Auguste Renoir, Paul Cezanne, and
Vincent van Gogh, who were the most
celebrated artists at the time of his 1901 arrival in Paris.

Picasso Landscapes: Out of Bounds will be accompanied by a catalog that is co-published by

the American Federation of Arts and DeMonico Books • D.A.P. and present a focused study of
Picasso’s landscapes. The book features an enriching overview of Picasso’s lifelong work
within the genre authored by the guest curator, as well as essays by Jacques Rancière and
Peter Jonathan Bell. Together they address such topics as Picasso’s views on nature,
encroaching industrialization, Picasso’s relationship to landscape as an established genre,
and Picasso’s last landscape painting. The catalog can be purchased in The Museum Store.

MMA is the final venue for this traveling exhibition.

Organization and Support

This exhibition is organized by the American Federation of the Arts with guest curator
Laurence Madeline, with the exceptional support of the Musée national Picasso-Paris.

The exhibition is generously supported by Monique Schoen Warshaw. Additional support has
been provided by Betsy S. Barbanell, Lee White Galvis, Clare E. McKoen, and Stephanie R.
La Nasa. Its presentation in Jackson, MS, is sponsored by the Robert M. Hearin Support
Foundation, Trustmark, and Visit Mississippi. Support for the accompanying publication
provided by Furthermore: a program of the J.M Kaplan Fund.

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About Picasso Celebration 1973-2023
April 8, 2023, marked the fiftieth anniversary of the death of the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso
and thus the year will represent the celebration of his work and his artistic legacy in France,
Spain, and internationally. The Picasso Celebration 1973-2023 is structured around some fifty
exhibitions and events that will be held in renowned cultural institutions in Europe and North
America, and which together will draw up a historiographical survey of approaches to
Picasso’s work. The commemoration, accompanied by official celebrations in France and
Spain, will make it possible to take stock of the research and interpretations of the artist’s
work, especially during an important international symposium in autumn 2023, which also
coincides with the opening of the Center for Picasso Studies in Paris. The Musée national
Picasso-Paris and the Spanish National Commission for the commemoration of the 50th
anniversary of the death of Pablo Picasso are pleased to support this exceptional program.

About the American Federation of the Arts

The American Federation of Arts is the leader in traveling exhibitions internationally. A
nonprofit organization founded in 1909, the AFA is dedicated to enriching the public’s
experience and understanding of the visual arts through organizing and touring art exhibitions
for presentation in museums around the world, publishing exhibition catalogues featuring
important scholarly research, and developing educational programs.

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Visitor Information
Opening Hours:
Tuesday – Saturday: 10 AM – 5 PM
Sunday: Noon – 5 PM

Admission Prices:
$18 Adults
$13 Seniors (65+)
$10 Youth* (ages 5-17) and College Students (with ID)
Free for Members
Free for children ages 5 and under
*Free for K-12 students on Tuesdays thanks to Feild Co-Operative Association and Thursdays
thanks to Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Mississippi.
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About the Mississippi Museum of Art
Established in 1911, the Mississippi Museum of Art (MMA) is dedicated to connecting
Mississippi to the world and the power of art to the power of community. The Museum’s
permanent collection includes paintings, photography, multimedia works, and sculpture by
Mississippi, American, and international artists. The largest art museum in the state, the
Mississippi Museum of Art offers a vibrant roster of exhibitions, public programs, artistic and
community partnerships, educational initiatives, and opportunities for exchange year-round.
Programming is developed inclusively with community involvement to ensure that a diversity of
voices and perspectives are represented. Located at 380 South Lamar Street in downtown
Jackson, the Museum is committed to honesty, equity, and inclusion. The Mississippi Museum
of Art and its programs are sponsored in part by the City of Jackson and Visit Jackson.
Support is also provided in part by funding from the Mississippi Arts Commission, a state
agency, and in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency. For more
information, visit msmuseumart.org.

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Image Captions

Page 1- Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881-1973), Landscape, Horta de Ebro, early summer 1909.
oil on canvas. 21 1/4 x 25 9/16 in. Denver Art Museum Collection: The Charles Francis
Hendrie Memorial Collection, 1966.175. Photo courtesy Denver Art Museum. ©2023 Estate of
Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Page 2- Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881-1973), View of Notre-Dame, Paris, April 13, 1945. oil
on canvas. 3 15/16 x 7 1/16 in. Private Collection, courtesy of Chalk & Vermilion, LLC. ©2023
Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York