RAMALLAH, June 18, 2011 (WAFA) – An original painting for one of the best known artists in history, Pablo Picasso, will be on exhibit in Ramallah starting Friday, according to organizers of the month-long event.

The exhibition, Picasso in Palestine and which is going to open at the Academy of Art Palestine (IAAP), will have on display Picasso’s original Buste de Femme (1943) painting. It will be the first time such an important art work is brought to the Palestinian Territory.

“Buste de Femme is one of the most iconic works from the collection of the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven and has been exhibited throughout the world in the past 50 years,” said an IAAP press release. “On the basis of a loan request made to the museum by IAAP in July 2009 and following extensive research, the work will travel to Ramallah in June. It will be exhibited in a specially constructed room inside the IAAP from 24 June to 20 July.”

“The negotiations to realize the art project, Picasso in Palestine, have been a complex endeavour as a seemingly simple request has reset the legal, artistic and official procedures for international art movements,” said IAAP.

“Beginning as a regular loan agreement between a museum and an academy, Picasso in Palestine not only academically questions the issues at stake in the relations between art, politics and geography, but also lives them in the act of travel. Picasso's first trip to Ramallah demonstrates the control systems that regulate accessibility to knowledge,” it said.

Charles Esche, director of the Van Abbemuseum, said, “Picasso in Palestine is part of a wider development in which a typical modern art collection tries to come to terms with the social and cultural changes taking place around us. One of the most pertinent questions is how a European art museum plays a meaningful role in helping to understand our global condition with all its internal contradictions. I believe we are also extending the potential of the collection through this action. Our Picasso will be changed by its journey to Ramallah, it will take on extra meaning and the story will remain a part of the history of the painting from this moment on. It feels like we are constructing new histories with such a project as well as preserving old ones.”

IAAP arts director Khaled Hourani said that ”Picasso in Palestine is an art project that aims to probe mechanisms, procedures, obstacles and requirements in getting a painting of this kind to Palestine. By doing so it sheds light on the contemporary reality of Palestine and gives the art project the power of the impossible. Picasso in Palestine is about institutions in different locations, the value and funding of art and on human relations and the media. The adventure starts when the art work leaves for Palestine but does not necessarily end when it safely arrives back home.”

On 25 and 26 June, the IAAP will host the Picasso Talks, a special program in which international speakers are invited to respond to the artistic, political and social implications surrounding the Picasso exhibition and process of taking it to Ramallah.

Internationally acclaimed film director, Rashid Mashharawi, is making a documentary of the process of preparing, transporting and exhibiting the work, which will be titled Picasso’s Journey. The film will be distributed in 2012.

Belgian art magazine, A Prior, will publish in October a special issue in English and Arabic dedicated to this project in which international artists, writers and curators will reflect on the project.

The portrait, Buste de Femme (1943), was chosen by students of the Academy. The work is one of the most outspoken examples of Picasso's expressionistic period in which he spoke out in response to the Spanish Civil War.

“Perhaps through his work we are able to talk about and imagine conditions in relation to cultural rights and struggles in other places and times too,” said IAAP.

The programme is organised in collaboration with Al-Ma’mal Foundation for Contemporary Art (Jerusalem), Outset Contemporary Art Fund UK, the Van Abbemuseum, Birzeit University’s Ethnographic and Art Museum, A.M Qattan Foundation, Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center, the Palestinian Art Court (AlHoash), and Sabreen Association for Artistic Development.

Curators include Fatima Abdulkarim, Remco de Blaaij, Charles Esche, and Khaled Hourani.

Picasso in Palestine was made possible by contributions from DOEN Foundation (Stichting Doen) and the Mondriaan Foundation.

Nina Tellegen, CEO of DOEN Foundation and an enthusiastic supporter of the project, said, “Picasso in Palestine sheds light on new ways of exhibiting art, the new role of museums and the meaning of art in different contexts. Besides that and more important it shows that such an exhibition is doable, even in a complex situation like Palestine. That’s what the DOEN Foundation stands for.”

The Mondriaan Foundation feels the Van Abbemuseum consequently questions the functioning of the museum in our contemporary society: “Never before have such questions into the (im)possibilities of loans to risk areas been asked, let alone undertaken in reality. The Van Abbemuseum dares to do this and via well chosen media partners it provides suitable context and depth for the project, as well as public accountability.”

M.A.