From the Prado to the Center Pompidou via the Met in New York, 42 exhibitions will be organized around the world for the fiftieth anniversary of Picasso’s death, an “unprecedented mobilization” for “the most famous artist of modern art “, according to Madrid and Paris.
Prepared for 18 months by France and Spain, the “Picasso Year” will mobilize “38 major institutions in Europe and the United States”, announced Monday to the press the Spanish Minister of Culture, Miguel Iceta, launching the celebrations at the Reina Sofia museum in Madrid.
These exhibitions will “show all the facets” of the Spanish artist, born in 1881 in Malaga (southern Spain) and died in 1973 in Mougins (south-eastern France), with a series of “conferences” and “debates” on the painter and his work, added his French counterpart, Rima Abdul Malak.
The celebrations will begin on September 23 at the Mapfre Foundation, in Madrid, with the exhibition Pablo Picasso and the dematerialization of sculpture. They will end in April 2024 at the Petit Palais, in Paris, with a retrospective on The Paris of the moderns (1905-1925).
In total, events paying tribute to the Spanish painter, described by the French Minister as the “most famous and emblematic artist of modern art”, will take place mainly in Spain, France and the United States but also in Germany, Switzerland, Romania and Belgium.
Among the institutions mobilized are the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Met) in New York, the Prado Museum in Madrid, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, the Pompidou Center in Paris, the Beyeler Foundation in Basel and the Picasso Museums in Barcelona and Paris.
“Excess” and “contradictions”
The objective is to “present Picasso as he was”, highlighting his “artistic heritage” and “the permanence of his work”, underlined Miguel Iceta in front of the painting. Guernicapainted in 1937 by Picasso, one of the most famous works in the world.
This painting – which immortalizes the massacre of the Basque town of Guernica, bombed in April 1937 by the Nazi air force, which came to support General Franco during the Spanish Civil War – is “a manifesto for peace”, added Rima Abdul Malak.
This plea “takes on a necessarily special connotation” at a time “when war is raging at the gates of Europe and when we stand alongside the Ukrainian people”, insisted the minister, in reference to the invasion of the Ukraine by Russia.
Beyond the political and historical references, the retrospectives organized within the framework of the “Picasso year” will be an opportunity, according to the organizers, to also look into the “excesses” and the “contradictions” of the artist.
The figure of Picasso, long deified for his pictorial genius, has been tarnished for several years by accusations of misogyny and violence against his companions, placed in the spotlight since the #MeToo movement.
The author of Ladies of Avignon and of The crying womanwho spent most of his life in France, was notably accused by journalist Sophie Chauveau in her book Picasso, the Minotaur to be a “jealous”, “perverse” and “destructive” man.
“It is important for the public to get to know Picasso better and also to know the part of violence that there was in him. This is something that should not be hidden, “recognized Rima Abdul Malak on Monday, while deeming it necessary to” not reduce all of Picasso’s work “on this subject.
The Spanish painter and sculptor’s relationship to women will be addressed in particular in the context of an exhibition planned at the Brooklyn Museum in New York, in the summer of 2023.