SASKATOON - A yet-to-be-built art gallery in Saskatoon has already scored an impressive exhibit.
Officials say the Remai (RAY-ME) Art Gallery of Saskatchewan will have the most complete collection of Picasso linocuts in the world when it opens in about two years.
Philanthropist Ellen Remai has donated her collection of about 400 pieces worth $20 million to the gallery.
A linocut is an engraving into linoleum, which is then painted and pressed onto canvas.
The gallery's board chairman, Jason Aebig (AY'-big), points out Remai has also contributed $30 million towards construction of the new gallery.
Picasso made the linocuts between 1951 and 1966.
Aebig put the gift of the Picasso works in context at a news conference Tuesday.
"The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Bibliotheque nationale in Paris each hold approximately 150 linocuts produced by Picasso. Our new gallery in Saskatoon, Sask., will house 405."
Remai purchased the collection from Frederick Mulder (MULL'-der), an art collector based out of London, but born in Eston, Sask. He had assembled the collection over the period of a decade.
Mulder says the collection includes on of Picasso's most famous linocuts "The Bust of a Woman After Cranach."
"There's no museum in the world that has more than one impression of it," he said. "You will have nine. You will have an amazing group of working proofs, in single colours, two colours, three colours, four colours, leading up to the final state _ all from the archive of the printer himself."
(CJWW)
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