Lecture with Richard P. Townsend
Picasso and the Masters…and Dora Maar Too
Saturday, November 1, 2025 at 11 a.m.
Leonhardt Auditorium

Pablo Picasso’s (1881–1973) late linocuts featured in Picasso and the Progressive Proof reveal one of the most significant themes of his entire career. Early trained as an academic artist, Picasso strove his entire life to enter the ranks of the great artists of the past. That he in effect accomplished this during his lifetime is a tribute to his ambition, drive and that quality that defines him as truly great, the innate sense of the received artistic tradition to which he was heir. Titian, Cranach and Goya are the “grands maîtres” he converses with in the exhibition. Underscoring this dialogue will be Townsend’s exciting new research on the previously unknown and unpublished drawings of Picasso’s lover and leading Surrealist artist in her own right, Dora Maar. She also was a product of the academic tradition and even while documenting with her camera the creation of Picasso’s Modernist masterpiece Guernica, she returned to painting, making drawings after Raphael, Durer, Vermeer and Velazquez. Townsend’s lecture will reveal the inexorable pull of the Old Masters on two of the most unforgettable icons of Modern art.