Picasso's Buste de Femme to go on display in West Bank

Jun 21, 2011, 13:33 GMT

Ramallah - Palestinians will from Friday get a chance to see an original Pablo Picasso masterpiece when it goes on display at a Ramallah art school, officials at the school said Tuesday.

The artist's 1943 Buste de Femme arrived in Ramallah under heavy security protection on Sunday and was placed on the wall in a specially prepared room at the International Academy of Art Palestine (IAAP) in preparation for the official opening Friday of the Picasso in Palestine exhibition.

The painting, was brought to Ramallah on loan from the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven Holland. It took the academy almost two years to bring it to Ramallah.

'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,' a statement from the art school said.

'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,' the statement added.

'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,' school official Kahled Hourani said.

'By doing so it sheds light on the contemporary reality of Palestine and gives the art project the power of the impossible.'

The exhibition, which will also include lectures and other events, will continue for one month. The 100-centimetre-by-80-centimetre painting is the most valuable work of art ever to be exhibited in the West Bank.

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