Presenting Picasso

During the 1930s the Valentine Gallery was the leading exhibition venue in the United States for Picasso’s work. Between 1931 and 1939 Valentine Dudensing organized seven solo exhibitions, more than any other American gallery during this decade.* Three were small-scale retrospectives preceding the Museum of Modern Art's Picasso retrospective that opened in November 1939. When Guernica, along with approximately 60 studies, arrived in the U.S. in May 1939, Picasso’s masterpiece first went on view at the Valentine Gallery where it remained for nearly a month before continuing on its national tour raising funds for Spanish refugees.

Dudensing's friendship with Picasso and relationships with the artist's Parisian dealers enabled the American dealer to gain access to recent and important paintings by the artist. As a result the Valentine Gallery was recognized as an important outlet for Picasso's paintings and drawings. By the time Dudensing closed the gallery in 1947 he had sold more paintings and drawings by Picasso than any other European artist.

In my article, Picasso’s American Valentine, published in OJO: le journal, the Picasso Administration's online publication, I explore the dealer's critical role in establishing the American market for Picasso's work in the first half of the twentieth-century. (In “Summary,” click the first entry to access my essay. At the bottom of each page click the down arrow to continue.)

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* For a comprehensive list of Picasso exhibitions held in six key cities in the U.S. during the first half of the 20th-century, see:

Julia May Boddewyn, "Selected Chronology of Exhibitions, Auctions, and Magazine Reproductions, 1910-1957," in Michael FitzGerald, Picasso and American Art. Exh. cat., (Whitney Museum of American Art. New York, 2006), 328-83.

The Paul Guillaume Collection of African Art Comes to the Valentine Gallery

According to Dr. Albert C. Barnes, Parisian art dealer Paul Guillaume's greatest contribution to the art world was that he rescued African Art "from its mere ethnological significance and converted it into a well of unsuspected spiritual richness from which the whole modern movement in art has drunk deeply."*

Paul Guillaume (1891-1934) arrived in Paris during the first decade of the twentieth-century. He worked in an upscale garage that imported rubber for tires from the French colonies. One of the suppliers included a statuette in a rubber shipment as a gift for Guillaume that he placed on display in the garage's window. There the piece attracted the attention of art critic and poet, Guillaume Apollinaire, who came inside to inquire about it. The two men became friendly and Apollinaire introduced Guillaume to his artist friends including Maurice de Vlaminck, André Derain, Amedeo Modigliani, and Pablo Picasso. All shared an interest in African sculpture.

With access to the works of this circle of artists, Paul Guillaume opened a gallery in February 1914 but was forced to close that summer once the war began. In an effort to generate income, Guillaume gave Marius de Zayas a trunk full of sculptures to take to New York to exhibit at Alfred Stieglitz's gallery "291." Objects that had previously only appeared in natural history museums were displayed on pedestals and artfully installed on the walls against large sheets of red, yellow, and black paper. Presenting the sculpture as "the root of modern art," 291 was the first to show African sculpture as Art.

Guillaume reopened his gallery in 1917 and soon became an important venue for the School of Paris. By 1929 he was financially overextended, however, and decided to sell his collection of African art. Recognizing an opportunity to display and market such a well-known and highly respected collection, Valentine Dudensing offered to publish a lavish, fully-illustrated catalogue documenting the works. Guillaume consented and in the spring of 1930, the Valentine Gallery presented an exhibition of seventy-four pieces from the Paul Guillaume Collection.

An Exhibition of Rare African Sculptures ran from March 24-April 12, 1930 and featured statues and masks from the Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Sudan, and Gabon. The Valentine Gallery audience had come to know the School of Paris paintings that were inspired by Guillaume's African collection and now they had the rare opportunity to see and even acquire the pieces for themselves.

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*Laurie Eglington, "Untimely Passing of Paul Guillaume Evokes Memories," The Art News (October 27, 1934), 4.