SATELLITE 2021 | London - Dubai
Virtual Exhibition

WAFI CITY
Dubai

Masterpiece Art are delighted to be expanding into the United Arab Emirates with several gallery spaces in the iconic WAFI City, itself a complex visually inspired by the art of one of histories’ great civilisations, the Ancient Egyptians.

Offering connoisseurs and art-lovers the chance to experience, first-hand, a wide range of fine art spanning several-hundred years of art history, the Masterpiece Art collection encompasses Old Master painting and 19th Century art, to Modern & Contemporary art. The eclectic array on offer provides an insight into Western art practices, past, present and future and represent a splice of the wider collection based in the United Kingdom as well as the projects and exhibitions to come.

A rich and varied exhibition schedule for 2021 will bring painting, sculpture, decorative arts, photography and installation art to the region of the United Arab Emirates, via lectures, artist residencies and exhibitions.

Their aim is the sharing of knowledge, academia and facilitating cross-cultural dialogue, leading to an appreciation and understanding of the arts, inspiring established and new collectors, students and the wider public.

Masterpiece Art is delighted to present a rarely seen full-set of twenty-four limited edition silver platters — the fruits of a collaboration between Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) and eminent French silversmith and goldsmith, François Hugo (1899-1981). Each of the limited-edition works feature a different design, which draw upon three recurring themes in the Spanish artist’s oeuvre — bullfighting, Jacqueline Roque and Henri Matisse.

When the first platters were completed in the late-1950s, Picasso originally intended to keep them for himself and resorted to hiding them from the public, occasionally showing them to a few friends who visited his studio. Even after the artist had at last, in 1965, authorised François Hugo to make a small, numbered edition of each platter for sale, the specimens were limited to a small circle of connoisseurs and friends. They were discretely sold through Jean Hughes, proprietor of the gallery Le Point Cardinal in Paris, where for the first time in 1967 some of the fruits of the collaboration were displayed in an exhibition entitled Atelier François Hugo.

A further highlight is the presence of a twenty-fifth “progenitor” platter, Visage aux mains, created in August 1957 for Picasso’s personal collection, retained by the artist until his passing in 1973 and thence by descent to his granddaughter Marina Picasso (b. 1950). The Visage aux mains platter represents the genesis of this seminal body of work in precious metal between artist and artisan.

Also on show are medallions of 5cm diameter, produced in 23-carat gold, representing the same twenty-four designs as seen in the silver platters; ceramics from 1956 and supporting imagery by Irish photographer Edward Quinn (1920-1997), who captured Picasso and wife Jacqueline at the Cannes home with these artworks between 1957-1960.

In anticipation of great interest — this part of Picasso’s extensive oeuvre never being publicly exhibited before in the United Arab Emirates — the show will run from 24th March, 2021.

The exhibition likewise includes equestrian painting, genre-painting, still-life painting, mythological scenes, Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, photography and a varied selection of contemporary art, by notable artists from the last 400 years.

Find out more: masterpieceart.co.uk
From 24th March 2021

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