The project of Cubism instigated by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque was a ménage à trois with a third, ghostly partner: Paul Cézanne. Cézanne’s presence in the relationship, as well as his own obsession with landscape, meant that genre of painting defined the movement’s early direction as pursued by Braque and Picasso—and that Cubism emerged overwhelmingly from depictions of the natural world (and had very little to do with trompe l’oeil—it bears noting). “Picasso Landscapes: Out of Bounds,” at The Mint Museum in Charlotte, North Carolina (February 11–May 21, 2023), is part of a year-long commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the artist’s death, “Picasso Celebration 1973-2023,” which includes some 50 exhibitions and events in Europe and North America. The exhibition in Charlotte traces Picasso’s own personal relationship with painting the landscape, from youthful depictions of the dry mountains of Málaga to the lush palm-filled canvasses of the end of his life in Mougins.
The “Out of Bounds” exhibition can be encountered as a before-and-after scenario: Picasso had to contend with the wholly novel conception of space he had unleashed on the world with the Pandora’s Box of Cubism, and his decisions
