Join painter Ali Banisadr in conversation Kenneth Brummel, AGO associate curator of modern art, about Pablo Picasso’s Blue Period paintings of 1901-1904. How does Picasso’s Blue Period resonate with contemporary painters today? How do we as contemporary viewers interpret Picasso’s use of colour and form to address the social problems of his time? These and other issues will be explored by Banisadr and Brummel. Presented as part of Picasso: Painting the Blue Period

A painter of epic vistas and dazzling intricacies, Ali Banisadr creates complex, turbulent worlds whose syncopated rhythms corral a multitude of references from art history as well as allusions to our own turbulent times. In any single, expansive canvas one might sense the crystalline detail of the Persian miniature tradition, the muscular brushwork of Abstract Expressionism, the narrative dexterity of the early Dutch masters, the bravura technique of the Venetian Renaissance, or the libidinous glyphs of Surrealism, among others. Banisadr’s work is included in collections worldwide, including the British Museum, Centre Pompidou, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, among others. Banisadr lives and works in New York City.

Kenneth Brummel is Associate Curator, Modern Art, at the AGO, where his selected exhibitions include Picasso: Painting the Blue Period (2021), Andy Warhol (2021), Mitchell/Riopelle: Nothing in Moderation (2018), Anthony Caro: Sculpture Laid Bare (2016-17) and Painting Tranquility: Masterworks by Vilhelm Hammershøi (2016). Prior to joining the AGO in 2014, Kenneth Brummel held curatorial positions in several major art museums in the United States, including the Cincinnati Art Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City. He holds a Master’s in Art History from The University of Chicago. Brummel’s area of specialty is late-nineteenth- and twentieth-century international modernism.