Decoding the "Chinese Connection" of Pablo Picasso, the master of Western art

This year's 8th April marks the 50th anniversary of the death of the famous Western artist Pablo Picasso, who passed away in a small town in the south of France at the age of 91.

Picasso's artistic career spanned over 70 years, with constant artistic innovations, from the early Blue Period and Rose Period to the African-influenced Period and Cubism. Each of these periods brought different feelings and thoughts to people. Picasso himself once said that style is something that "usually confines the artist to the same perspective, technique and formula year after year, sometimes for the rest of his life" and that he "never stays in one place", so he "has no style". Picasso was always trying to understand and assimilate the different cultures and arts of the world, and his assessment of Eastern art and his own drawing on it became an important subject of study in the exchange between Eastern and Western art from an early stage. Picasso's connection with China has also been the subject of much discussion in the cultural and artistic world.

A black and white photograph of Pablo Picasso on display at the exhibition commemorating the 50th anniversary of his death at the Picasso National Museum in Paris, France. Credit: Yang Li.

One of the most popular anecdotes about Picasso's relationship with China is a meeting he had with Daqian Zhang, a master of Chinese painting, in France in the 1950s. According to Mr. Zhang's recollection, Picasso declared at this meeting that 'there is no art in the West, the real art is in China'. However, this amazing comment by Picasso is only found in Daqian Zhang's own recollections, and there is no record of Picasso's side of the story. The question of whether Picasso actually made such a statement is a historical mystery.

But the historical facts behind this anecdote are worth discovering. On the one hand, it is true that for Picasso, before his meeting with Daqian Zhang, he already knew something about Chinese culture and painting. The Chinese artist Ding Zhang visited Picasso before Daqian Zhang did and presented him with a set of woodblock watermarks of Baishi Qi's paintings. Picasso's influence from Eastern culture can be seen in the clean lines and compositions of his pottery and cubist works. The symbolism and allegory in his paintings is also thought to have been inspired by Eastern symbolism. Some also consider his painting Piper and naked woman to be characteristic of Chinese ink painting.

Thirteen Picasso ceramics from the Madura Ceramics Workshop in southern France are on display in Nanjing. Credit: Bo Yang.

On the other hand, the direct exchange with Picasso opened a window for Chinese art, and in June 1915, the Chinese educator Yuanpei Cai visited Picasso in France and bought at least five of his works to bring back to China, marking the official introduction of Picasso's works to China. Yuanpei Cai's comment on Picasso's paintings was that "at first glance, they appear to be patterns, but not patterns; they appear to be figures, but not figures", and that "when one sees a thing and finds it beautiful, it is only the sensation of various lines". This is also one of the earliest records of Picasso's paintings by Chinese scholars.

Qiye Li, who visited Picasso with Ding Zhang, recalls that he "gave us his own album, inscribing the title page with a brush using Chinese characters, and drawing a peace dove in three or five strokes". Ding Zhang was influenced by Picasso and developed an artistic style that was 'a blend of East and West', and some of his works were jokingly referred to as 'Picasso plus Chenghuang Temple'. So much so that Daqian Zhang was willing to accept the idea that both Chinese and Western painting were compatible, and not only did he not reject Picasso's work, but he also commented that Picasso had profound painting skills.

Visitors to Picasso's oil on canvas painting The Kiss at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, UCCA, Beijing. Credit: Zhengfeng Bian.

In the 1940s, Picasso's left-wing leanings and membership of the Communist Party drew him closer to the Chinese Communist Party, and in October 1944, Picasso announced that he had joined the French Communist Party, which was announced in the Chinese Communist press and celebrated with an exhibition of Picasso's paintings in Yan'an at the time.

On March 3, 2014, the exhibition "Picasso: The Volar Series of Prints", the pinnacle of twentieth-century printmaking, was held at the National Museum of China. Credit: Xulin Pan.

From the 1960s to the 1970s, it was clear that the style of the vast majority of Picasso's work was at odds with the artistic tone of the Red Revolution in China at the time, and as a result, he was continually ostracised and marginalised. It was only after China's reform and opening up in 1978 that the works of Western masters such as Picasso returned to the limelight and were once again recognised by all sectors of society.

In April 2021, Bonhams Hong Kong presents Picasso's masterpiece portrait oil painting, Woman in a Mauve Beret. Credit: Zhihua Li.

Some of Picasso's famous works have been included in Chinese primary and secondary school textbooks, including his 1932 painting Dream and his 1937 Cubist painting Guernica. In addition, Picasso's paintings have become highly sought after in China's art collection market, fetching astronomical prices at major auction houses and thus becoming a symbol of wealth. Ten years ago, at a Christie's auction in New York, Wanda Group had sold Picasso's painting Two Children for US$28.16 million. At Sotheby's Asia 50th Anniversary Hong Kong auction in April this year, Picasso's Woman in a Chair fetched HK$93.08 million.

Picasso's Woman in a Chair at Sotheby's Hong Kong Spring Auction Preview on 3 April 2023. Credit: Yongnuo Chen.

During this period, Chinese cultural circles have also thought more deeply about Picasso studies, no longer limiting themselves to interpreting Picasso's paintings themselves. For example, the literary critic Danqing Chen once said that there were various reasons for not understanding Picasso, one of which was that "his ecology did not come over to China, only he did", which is the same as “a painting is without context- even it is a wonderful statement, you really have no way to understand it”.

Since the reform and opening up of China, Picasso's works have been increasingly associated with humanistic exchanges between France and China. 1983 saw the first exhibition of Picasso's original works in China, an exhibition of 33 works was held at the National Art Museum of China for 20 days. In the following 30 years, Picasso's original works were exhibited in China from France on several occasions.

In February 2012, Ms. Anne Badassery, Director of the Musée National Picasso, set up the exhibition for the Picasso 2012 China Exhibition in Chengdu. Credit: Yuan An.

In June 2019, "Picasso - The Birth of a Genius" was exhibited at UCCA's Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing, with a careful selection of more than 100 works by Picasso, with a total value reportedly close to US$1 billion. This is the largest exhibition of works from the collection of the Picasso Museum in Paris to China, showcasing the entire process of Picasso's stylistic transformation and attracting hundreds of thousands of people to queue up to see the exhibition.

It is worth mentioning that the exhibition is an important part of the 2019 "Sino-French Cultural Spring" series of events and has received the attention of the leaders of both countries, reflecting the high level of cultural exchanges between France and China. This year marks the 20th anniversary of the mutual cultural year between France and China, and the exhibition "Picasso - The Birth of a Genius" has been listed on the official blog of the French Culture Network as one of the 8 major events in the last 20 years of cultural exchange between France and China.

A large number of visitors visit Picasso - The Birth of a Genius at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing on June 15, 2019. Credit: Yu Hou.