Picasso at LewAllen Galleries

Apr. 7—details

—Celebrating Picasso's Legacy: Important Works on Paper

—10 a.m. to 6 p.m. weekdays and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturdays, through May 6

—LewAllen Galleries, 1613 Paseo de Peralta

—505-988-3250, lewallengalleries.com

To a casual viewer, the central figure in one of Pablo Picasso's creations might reveal itself as a bull, or perhaps a minotaur. To the renowned artist, there was no doubt about the true identity of these imposing beasts: Pablo Picasso.

"Picasso is in virtually every piece he does; in some form or another, he always sneaks himself in," says Louis Newman, director of modernism at LewAllen Galleries. Newman and exhibition co-curator Justin Ferate shared insights with Pasatiempo on a recent Monday in LewAllen's basement about the latest exhibition, Celebrating Picasso's Legacy: Important Works on Paper, which runs through May 6.

The exhibition, which features works Picasso transmitted to paper, coincides with the 50th anniversary of Picasso's death on April 8, 1973.

One of the first pieces, La Grande Corrida, avec Femme Torero (The Big Run, with Female Bullfighter), depicts the fate-altering interaction between a bull and its human killer. It's brutal and chaotic on the surface — belying the image's far deeper meaning, Newman says.

"Bullfighting is about high Mass at a really, really Roman Catholic church in Spain," he says. "It's majesty, it's grandeur, it's pomp, and it's also very sexual. Sex runs through Picasso's work; he always envisions himself as the bull."

Femme Torero. Dernier Baiser? (Female Bullfighter. Last Kiss?) depicts a kiss between a bull — Picasso — and his then-mistress. The interaction rewards patience and probing; viewers must turn their head about 160 degrees — so they're looking at the painting nearly upside down — in order to see it clearly.

"Here you see the horn of the bull, the bull's eye, and the bull's lips, and the lip is kissing the toreador [bullfighter]," he says. "At this point, the relationship between [mistress] Marie-Thérèse Walter and Picasso is diminishing. He's actually got his eyes sighted on another woman. So this is his sort of 'kiss me before you leave' kind of thing.

"Now this is all interpretation, because Picasso himself never spoke of what these things actually meant."

One thing not up for interpretation, Newman says, is Walter's influence on Picasso's work. They met when Picasso was in his mid-40s and married to Olga Khokhlova, who remained his wife until her death in 1955.

"She was a teenager when he met her," he says of Walter. "His relationship with his wife was going south, and after he met Marie-Thérèse, he had an interesting way he kept insisting on a date. She said no, so every day he would go draw a dove on the side of her house."

Picasso painted bullfighting scenes only while having an affair with Walter, Newman says. The relationship lasted from about 1927 to 1935, ending when his romantic attention turned to French painter and poet Dora Maar.

One can trace Picasso's many affairs — as well as his two marriages, the second to Jacqueline Roque — through his art, Newman says.

His images "are often about the women that he's with, and they're very self-exposing," he says. "Marie-Thérèse was this beautiful, young, perky teenager. Picasso was considerably older."

Perhaps as a result of his relationships with younger women, Newman says, Picasso often painted younger versions of himself. It's not the only area in which Picasso's identity could be a challenge to pin down.

Picasso was Jewish but was raised Roman Catholic, growing up in Barcelona, Newman says. He moved to Paris in 1904.

"Picasso's ancestry is not unlike about one-sixth of the people in the state of New Mexico who are Jewish but were obliged to become Roman Catholic," Newman says. "He never talked about being Jewish, just like the Jews in New Mexico never talked about being Jewish."

Many of the 14 works featured in Celebrating Picasso's Legacy: Important Works on Paper came from a private collection, Newman says. And Ferate emphasizes that the prints in the exhibition are not reproductions, distanced from the artist who conceived them.

"That's why major museums have departments of prints and drawings," he says. "They don't show photomechanical reproductions. The second thing is, this is not just a famous person; he may be the most famous name in 20th century art, and he happened to have done prints."

In fact, Ferate says, Picasso is known for innovations still used by contemporary printmakers.

"There's a joke in Santa Fe that everyone in Santa Fe is an artist," Ferate says, laughing. "We realized the truth is everyone in Santa Fe is really a printmaker. People come to scrutinize the printing: 'Now, how did he do this?'"

Newman says he and Ferate kept in mind that many viewers will have some knowledge of the artist's life and work. As a result, they say, the show isn't Picasso 101.

That said, those who are new to his prints can acquaint themselves by looking for two things: stand-in images of Picasso himself, such as the aforementioned bulls, and lines that both anchor images and cut a swath through the chaos they convey.

"Picasso was about the line, no matter what form he was working in — the imperative nature of the line," Newman says. "The line never gets lost."

Ferate adds that viewers can also see Picasso's stories in his art.

"I think he wanted to communicate through his heart — visually — and that's probably why he didn't share so many of the stories," Ferate says.

And while placards accompany each piece to give the viewer some basics, plenty is left to interpretation — by design.

"I think Picasso would have preferred that you not know [everything he intended], and I think that's important," Newman says. "Because as you've heard a million times, it really is what the viewer brings to the work that gives it value."