São Paulo – For the first time, Palestine presents to its residents a picture by Pablo Picasso. "Buste de Femme" ("Bust of a Woman") has been exhibited in Ramallah, in the West Bank, since June 24th and may be seen up to July 20th at International Academy of Art Palestine (IAAP).
Having a picture worth US$ 7 million in occupied territory was not easy. It all began in 2009 and cash from sponsors was necessary. But that was not as hard as crossing the Israeli blockade. Despite all the hardship, the picture may now be seen by Palestinians.
One metre tall and 80 centimetres wide, “Buste de Femme” depicts one of Picasso’s wives, Françoise Gilot, with whom he had Claude and Paloma. The picture is considered one of the best examples of Picasso’s expressionism (an artistic movement that stands out for the distortion of forms). It was painted in 1943, the same year in which he, aged 62, met Françoise, aged 21.
The idea of showing a Picasso to the Palestinians arose in 2009, when the artistic director of the museum, Khaled Hourani, decided he could bring to the region a painting by a famous artist. "Buste de Femme" was chosen by the IAAP students. In September 2010, Hourani got in contact with the Van Abbemuseum, from the Netherlands, which owns the painting. After finding partners to raise the US$ 200,000 necessary to make the project come true, the Dutch museum agreed to loan the picture to the Palestinian art gallery.
The money came from donations from people and institutions like Doen Foundation and Mondriaan Foundation, both Dutch, as well as British and Palestinian organisations. According to the “Picasso in Palestine” project coordinator, Fatima Abdulkarim, who is also one of the curators of the exhibition, the picture left Eindhoven airport, in the Netherlands, and arrived at Ben Gurion International Airport, in Tel Aviv, Israel.
To reach its destination, in the West Bank, the work needed to cross several border controls. At one of them, Israeli soldiers checked the objects’ documentation. “They allow nothing,” said Fatima.
She says that the organizers hired a Palestinian company to escort the picture from the airport to Ramallah, but, later, were obliged to hire an Israeli company to take the painting from the airport terminal to Qalandiya post, one of the gateways into the Palestinian city. From that crossing point, the painting covered another 15 kilometres escorted by the Palestinians.
The exhibition was considered historic. “Thousands of people from all over Palestine have already seen the painting. We received hundreds of people, many youths, every day,” said Fatima.
Although she says the painting is entirely safe in Palestine, Fatima recognises that conditions are not ideal. “We are a teaching institution, not a museum. We have our safety, our standards. Of course it is not like a museum, we do not have adequate lighting for exhibition, we do not have ideal temperature and humidity control within the room,” she said. Some adaptations were made for the IAAP to receive the painting.
The project is not restricted to the exhibition. The entire trip by "Buste de Femme" should become a documentary in 2012. The trip through Palestine is also a test and may result in the exhibition of other paintings in the region. “It is an examination into what it means to take a painting like this to Palestine, while we do not have a political or legal reference,” said Fatima.
Apart from the political and diplomatic results it may bring, the exhibition of a Picasso exerts another kind of influence. “This has a cultural meaning, as it is opening our eyes to many things, and we are also testing the resistance and the capacity of Palestinian cultural institutions to, for example, have our own museum,” said the project coordinator. “Palestine is not living a revolution. This, however, is Picasso’s revolution,” she finished off.
*Translated by Mark Ament
