Dear Editor,

I'm writing to gauge your interest in covering a major Picasso  
exhibition that is being hosted by Heather James Fine Art in Palm  
Desert, CA.   It opens on November 28, 2009, and runs until March 14,  
2010.   Please see press release and photos of featured pieces below.

This extraordinary exhibition includes some rarely seen/auctioned  
works and features a private collection of Picasso's ceramics.

I'd be happy to arrange an interview for you with Heather James Fine  
Art Curator Chip Tom or owner Jim Carona.

All best wishes,

Belen Anzaldo
Account Coordinator
The Busby Group
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE



For Media Inquiries, Contact:

The Busby Group

Scott Busby | Belen Anzaldo

scottb@thebusbygroup.com

belena@thebusbygroup.com

310.475.2914





Major Picasso Exhibition Comes to

Heather James Fine Art in Palm Desert, CA



Exhibition To Run November 28, 2009, through

March 14, 2010; Features Unique Ceramics,

Paintings, Sculptures and Works on Paper





PALM DESERT, CALIFORNIA – October 15, 2009 - Heather James Fine Art in  
Palm Desert, CA, (http://www.heatherjames.com) has established itself  
among U.S. and international art collectors as one of the nation’s  
premier galleries with shows by Monet, Rauschenberg and diverse, up- 
and-coming young artists.   Today it announces a world-class Picasso  
exhibition that will survey the master’s paintings, drawings and  
sculptures from several of his major periods, including Cubism, and  
will highlight an important private collection of 80 pieces of  
Picasso’s ceramics.   These works will appeal to a wide range of  
collectors with prices from $5000 to $25 million.  The show will run  
November 28, 2009, through March 14, 2010.



“Picasso was an artist that influenced multiple generations,” says  
Chip Tom, acclaimed curator for Heather James Fine Art.  “That’s due  
not only to his brilliance, but also to how long he lived and  
worked.   He was an artist who was personally pushing his own art to  
new levels every day, experimenting with diverse genres and cultural  
influences, challenging himself to create in many different mediums.”



James Carona, owner of Heather James Fine Art, believes Picasso  
perfectly represents the mission of his gallery.  “We want to create  
dialogues between different art forms, time periods and genres, just  
as Picasso did.  We’re very excited to have these extraordinary works  
by the master here, not only to see how they interact themselves, but  
also to see what kinds of dialogues they’ll generate with works of  
other artists we will be showing concurrently.”



Picasso, who died in 1973 at the age of 92, created thousands of  
unique ceramics during his lifetime, many made in limited editions at  
the Madoura pottery factory in the south of France.  The ceramics,  
like all of his work, reflect the artist’s passion for mythology and  
women.  “These pieces are very autobiographical and at times reflect  
Picasso’s very sexual nature,” says the owner of the collection.  “He  
was a prolific print maker and he saw the clay as an extension of his  
etchings and paintings.”  Picasso would find objects and press them  
into the clay, he would etch images into the wet clay and he would  
paint the pieces before they were fired in the kiln. He made the  
ceramics so people who could not afford his paintings could enjoy and  
buy his art.



Standout pieces of the exhibition include:



Grand White Vase with Four Panels, 1956, ceramic (pictured) - Picasso  
designed and supervised the making of this stunning piece himself.   
 From an edition of 25, the vase reveals iconic imagery that the  
artist loved and repeated throughout his lifetime.  It presents  
different images etched on each of its “four sides:” a powerful  
smiling sun, a human face, and a woman front and back - her sex and  
belly button on the front, her buttocks on the backside.   Picasso  
truly loved to do the ceramics because they gave people a tactile  
experience, not like paintings.



Paloma, 1951, oil on canvas (pictured) – Born in 1949, Paloma, the  
daughter of Picasso and French painter Francoise Gilot, was a frequent  
subject of her father’s brush.  Beginning in 1949 and continuing  
throughout the early 1950s, Picasso completed a series of portraits of  
Paloma and her older brother Claude in their nursery. These pictures  
are characterized by a linear simplicity that calls to mind the  
naiveté of childhood, and they can also be seen as direct responses to  
the “playful” cutouts that occupied Picasso's archrival Matisse around  
the same time. But the deceptively simple formalism of these works is  
counter-balanced by a powerful subjectivity that was rarely seen in  
20th century portraits of children.



La Petite Chouette, 1953, assemblage sculpture (pictured) – This  
famous sculpture from the Ganz family collection belongs to Picasso’s  
assemblages, works of art he created by freely combining ready-made,  
found objects. “He began making assemblages in the early 1940s when he  
came across an old bicycle saddle and a rusty pair of handlebars on a  
scrap heap,” says Carona.  “He immediately saw a bull's head in these  
odd parts and later executed his vision.  His objective wasn’t to  
produce a dramatic effect, but rather to create an object from a  
spontaneous decision.” Picasso made this owl entirely from pieces of  
scrap, including nails, screws, nuts, a pair of pliers and a metal  
saucepan molded together with plaster.



Arlequin au Bicorne, 1918, oil on board laid down on cradled panel  
(pictured) - Throughout 1917, the figure of the Harlequin reappears in  
Picasso’s works, though mostly in Synthetic Cubist drawings and  
paintings.  This work was painted in Montrouge during Picasso and his  
new love Russian ballerina Olga Koklova’s visit there.   It stands out  
from Picasso’s other works that year in that it is stylistically  
distinct from the Cubist harlequin paintings and, in fact, presages  
the classical period he would begin in 1920.  Though a portrait, and  
somewhat light and humorous in its nature, Picasso here is clearly  
exploring the esthetics he would develop years later.



Buste de Femme D’Apres Cranach, 1958, linocut (pictured) – In 1958,  
Picasso left Paris to live in the south of France.  Unable to find the  
kinds of printers he was used to working with in the capital, he began  
to experiment with the linocut, a medium used locally to print posters  
to advertise the bullfights.  Inspired by a postcard from D.H.  
Kahnweiler, Buste de femme d'après Cranach le Jeune is Picasso's first  
major use of the medium.  One critic commented: “This virtuoso work  
combines incredible technical mastery with striking vitality of the  
subject.”



Heather James Fine Art is located at 45188 Portola Avenue, Palm  
Desert, CA 92260.  For more information about the Heather James  
galleries and the Picasso exhibition, visit our website or call Emily  
at 760.346.8926.



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