DOMÈNECH, SÍLVIA / GUIGON, EMMANUEL
PICASSO - CLERGUE presents in the form of a chronicle a selection from the Lucien Clergue photographic collection, which the Museu Picasso acquired in 2016, relating to Picasso: the story in images that Clergue did of Picasso during the many meetings that took place in the south of France, where they both lived. PICASSO - CLERGUE is both a family album and a diary of friendship.
In 2016, the Museu Picasso in Barcelona bought Lucien Clergues photographic collection on Picasso: about six hundred black-and-white photographs in silver salts, all prints from the period. This exhibition presents, in the form of a chronicle, a selection of this collection: the story in images that Clergue did of Picasso during the numerous meetings that took place in the south of France, where they both lived.
Lucien Clergue (1934-2014) was not yet twenty years old when, in 1953, on his way out of a bullfight in Arles, he presented his first photos to Pablo Picasso and took the opportunity to photograph him. Two years later, they met in La Californie, Picasso's home in Cannes, when the artist invited him to take pictures.
«Why this privilege? My portraits of acrobats, done in the spirit of his Harlequins, had moved him as much as he had been fascinated by my essays on the carcasses of animals dumped in the Rhine or on the destruction of Arles by Allied bombing. Picasso found in my research his personal concerns: carrion and ruins reflected a macabre universe that he himself had represented in Guernica. The war brought us together, and so did bullfighting, which had allowed me to get to know him - and photograph him - two years earlier at the Arles Amphitheatre.»
It was the beginning of a friendship that would last until the artist's death in 1973. Lucien Clergue regularly showed his work to Picasso, who designed for him the cover of the book Corps mémorable, published by Seghers in 1957 and in which the photographs accompanied poems by Paul Eluard, and the poster for the first exhibition he held in Zurich in 1958. Picasso introduced him to his friends, including Jean Cocteau, who advised him on the choice of his titles and wrote texts to accompany his photos. Cocteau invited Lucien Clergue to take part in the filming of The Testament of Orpheus in the quarries of Baux-de-Provence, near Arles, where the photographer helped build the sequence about the gypsies.
The affection and affinity between Picasso and Clergue made it possible to document small episodes of Picasso's life, all about scenes that happened over time and ended up explaining a part of the artist's life. We can appreciate an intimate Picasso, trapped in his daily life, tender and thoughtful, always attentive. PICASSO - CLERGUE is both a family album and a diary of friendship. The commemoration of a life of complicity.
