Full name: Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Martyr Patricio Clito Ruíz y Picasso—Pablo Picasso for short. Co-founder of the Cubist movement, infamous womanizer, and art-circle socialite, the world-renown artist’s works are being displayed in Asia for the first time. Welcome to Picasso de Malaga, Picasso Absoluto in Seoul, Korea.

▲ Pictures taken from the later part of Picasso's life. Photographed by Lee Jun Geon

If you have not heard of Picasso even once in your life, you have lived under a rock. Even if people may not be able to name the exact title of his works, they will definitely be able to define his unique style—simplified, distorted, but in a way also strangely appealing.

But how many of these people truly know about the artist Picasso? His quirks? Personality? The production process by which he created his works of art? Picasso de Malaga, Picasso Absoluto gives its viewers a peep into what the man Picasso was really like, and thus builds a deeper understanding of Picasso’s artistic career.

Of course, those who had been expecting to see the artist’s famous oil paintings may be let down. There is no “Guernica” or “The Dream” to be found here. In fact, at first glance the exhibition seems somewhat dull, what with its lack of color. Though the exhibition displays some 200 pieces of artwork carefully selected among 800 works from Malaga’s Picasso Foundation, his famous oil paintings were excluded due to logistics and safety-related problems. Thus the exhibition consists mostly of lithographs, etchings, and books—mostly all unexciting black and white scribbles.

Or so it may seem. Despite the seeming lackluster of the pieces on display, it just so happens that they embody the essence of Picasso—free, daringly experimental, and unfettered by tradition or public opinion. Take “The Artist and His Sewing Model,” for example. It is on display at the exhibition as one of the many illustrations commissioned for a special re-edition of the famous French writer Honoré de Balzac’s 1837 short story, Le Chef-d’oeuvre inconnu.

Interpreted as “The Unknown Masterpiece” in English, the story unfolds around an aging artist called Frenhofer. He reveals to two of his ardent admirers that he has been working on a secret painting for the last ten years, and yet has been unable to complete it. Upon hearing this, one of his admirers offers his own lover as a model, to provide inspiration for Frenhofer and speed up his painting process. Later on, when shown the finished painting, though, all that is on the canvas is part of a foot lost in a swirl of colors. Naturally, the two admirers are disappointed to the extreme; this drives Frenhofer to madness, and eventually he ends up destroying the painting and killing himself.

The dominant emotions that spring up after hearing this story would be confusion and frustration. Apparently Picasso felt the same way. Thus, he chose to illustrate the book with drawings that inspired similar feelings as did its text. In other words, the illustrations he came up with often had no relevance to the text they accompanied in order to inspire confusion and frustration in his readers, just as Frenhofer’s paintings inspired in its viewers. It is for this reason that Picasso draws an artist with his sewing model, though there is no mention at all of “sewing” in Balzac’s book.

Picasso’s oddity and daring when it came to challenging convention can also be seen through his other works. At the age of 65, the artist started experimenting in the field of pottery, producing the ceramic vases and plates now on display at the exhibition. He incorporated sculpting, painting, and dessin techniques into his pottery, shaping his vases to resemble parts of women’s bodies, and using plates as a means to hold images, like a canvas. He was also uninhibited in his material, mixing in the occasional brick or tile in his clay, scratching off the surface.

of his pottery, and carving in grooves. Though such endeavors may not seem groundbreaking today, just a few decades ago they were so avant-garde that ceramic experts of Picasso’s time are said to have remarked that any potter who produced works like Picasso would go out of business.

In this way, Picasso was a pioneer. He challenged commonly accepted views of the methods and materials with which to produce art, constantly coming up with new ways to express himself. However, it is important to note that he was a striving genius. His unique style was the result not of a moment’s stroke of genius, but rather of diligent endeavor. The lithograph “Two Nude Women” is a testimony to this fact. The exhibition shows four versions of the same composition back to back; the first version is almost realistic, but as each version progresses, the composition becomes increasingly more simplified and distorted until we arrive at last at the final version, a veritable Picasso-like Cubist drawing. From this, the audience can see for themselves Picasso’s creative thought-process. The father of Cubism himself did not see the world in a warped way—oftentimes, it was through careful premeditation and practice that Picasso was able to produce his works.

There are countless other pieces to be seen at the exhibition. Divided into fourteen different sections under four themes including Picasso’s women, an introspection into man, nature, and Picasso as an illustrator, the exhibition will no doubt provide its viewers with an insight into the mind of the creative genius. Already displayed at Incheon during the course of September, the exhibition will move on to Hangaram Art Museum starting October, and stay there until the end of November before returning back to Malaga, Spain.

▲ Pintor y modelo tejiendo © 2013 - Succession Pablo Picasso - SACK (Korea)

▲ Photographed by Lee Jun Geon

▲ Two Naked Women © 2013 - Succession Pablo Picasso - SACK (Korea)