US curators back Picasso Y-block
NEW YORK’S Museum of Modern Art has thrown its considerable cultural weight behind the campaign to rescue Oslo’s brutalist Y-block building and its two gigantic sandblasted murals by Pablo Picasso.
Martino Stierli, chief curator of architecture and design at the museum, and Ann Temkin, chief curator of painting and sculpture, co-signed a letter to Erna Solberg, Norway’s prime minister, expressing their “grave concern” at the building’s impending destruction, and asking for her government to “reconsider the approved decision for the demolition”.
The building, the letter said, was “a significant example of European brutalist architecture”, designed by Erling Viksjö, the noted Norwegian architect, while murals had marked a new stage in Picasso’s career. “Picasso’s murals for the Y-block in many ways signal the beginning of the artist’s celebrated works of monumental sculpture that can be found in cities like Chicago and New York,” they wrote.
“As such, the ensemble is a prime example of the notion of a post-war ‘synthesis of the arts’,” they continued, explaining that its removal would mark “a significant loss of Norwegian architectural heritage”.
Gro Nesjar Greve, the daughter of Carl Nesjar, the Norwegian painter who executed the murals, told The Art
Newspaper that the building had been fenced in at the start of this month.
“The building was fenced in 10 days ago, and The Fishermen [one of the murals] was covered up. Workers at the site started drilling, but it’s worrying as once they start moving the mural, it will crack. Nobody has explained how they will do it. The art is the wall.”
The government announced its plan to demolish the Y-block in 2014, three years after it was abandoned after sustaining damage in Anders Breivik’s twin terror attack. A majority of Norway’s political parties backed the decision two years later, with plans drawn up to incorporate the murals into the facade of a modern replacement.