Guided Viewing: "Pablo Picasso: Paintings in Glass" with Dr. Florian Knothe (Members Only)

The HKU Museum Society is delighted to present a guided viewing of Pablo Picasso: Paintings in Glass with Dr. Florian Knothe, Director of UMAG.

This exhibition Pablo Picasso: Paintings in Glass is an unprecedented display of works by the world-famous twentieth-century painter, supported by the French May Arts Festival and Hongkong Land. In the mid-1950s, the workshops of Roger Malherbe-Navarre expanded on the light boxes of French painter Jean Crotti by layering pieces of glass into pictorial depictions (gemmail, French for ‘enamel gem’) of several of Picasso’s paintings.

Impressed by the gemmistes’ masterful assembling and fusing of carefully selected glass, Picasso declared ‘A new art is born!’ Made and exhibited to explore and display the medium’s artistic possibilities, the results are simply astonishing. The selection of works on loan from a private collection, and on view at UMAG during the French May Arts Festival 2023, shed a new light on some of Picasso’s most renowned painterly compositions.

Speaker
Dr. Florian Knothe teaches the history of decorative arts in the 17th and 18th century with particular focus on the social and historic importance of royal French manufacture. He has long been interested in the early modern fascination with Chinoiserie and the way royal workshops and smaller private enterprises helped to create and cater to this long-lasting fashion. Dr. Knothe worked at The Metropolitan Museum of Art focusing on European Sculpture and Decorative Arts, and on European and East Asian glass at The Corning Museum of Glass, before his current position as Director of the University Museum and Art Gallery at HKU.

Photo Credit:
Still life with pigeon (Nature morte au pigeon) Roger Malherbe-Navarre (Les Gemmaux de France studio) After Pablo Picasso 1954–1957 Gemmail H. 70.5 cm x W. 85 cm Private collection
Courtesy of UMAG