PICASSO AND LITTLE

Exhibitions

Apr 28

Pablo Picasso, an absolute icon in the art world, and John Little, a forgotten remarkable talent.

Talk about a duo we did not see coming.

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) and John Little (1907-1984) are not a duo we were expecting to see side by side in an exhibition. But it all makes perfect sense.

They both had very different careers. While Picasso is one of the most famous and iconic artists of all time, Little is less known to the general public. Born in Alabama in 1907, he was acquainted with professionals like George Grosz, Hans Hofmann, Lee Krasner, and Jackson Pollock, working jobs like designing fabric and wallpaper in the textile business or as a navy aerial photographer in 1942. As an abstract painter, the artist had some solo exhibitions, his first one taking place in 1946 at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco. The great thing -and why we love this exhibition- is that Picasso influenced Little’s art. The Spanish artist inspired him in the production of his late 1940s works, like Untitled 3 (1948) or Untitled 4 (1948), which are featured in this post.

Presented by Sager Reeves Gallery, the exhibition unites these two artists creating a perfect harmony. The colors in Picasso’s lithographies touch, combine, and connect with Little’s compositions, almost as if you needed one to understand the other. This phenomenon is most evident in works like Femme Assise (1947; 1979-1982) and Side Winder (1960), Untitled (1978) and Femme au Fauteuil Canne (20th Century; 1979-1982) or Untitled No. 3 (1948) and Femme au Tablier Rayer Vert (1920; 1979-1982).

In making this exhibition possible, Sager Reeves Gallery opens a conversation around John Little and his artistic legacy, “using” the enormous appeal that comes with Pablo Picasso’s name, wanting to attract the public’s attention—also making sure that we -slowly but surely- start incorporating artists into our catalog that we don’t talk about as much, but whose works we should value and treasure.