The twenty or so solo or group exhibitions since 1973 that have focused on the study of the posterity of Pablo Picasso’s oeuvre testify to its impact on contemporary art.The exhibition at the Grand Palais takes a simultaneously chronological and thematic approach to the critical and artistic highlights of Picasso’s career and the myth that gradually built up around his name.
From Cubist still lifes to the Musketeers in the exhibitions in Avignon in 1970 and 1973, the exhibition is punctuated by works by Picasso from the collections of the Picasso Museum in Paris, the Musée National d’art Moderne, and the artist’s family. They are presented in a way reminiscent of the artist’s arrangements in his studios and the exhibitions that he personally supervised (Georges Petit gallery in Paris in 1932, Palais des Papes in Avignon in 1970, and 1973). The great stylistic phases (Cubism, last work), and emblematic works by Pablo Picasso (Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, Guernica) are put alongside contemporary creations, grouped by artist (Hockney, Johns, Lichtenstein, Kippenberger..), or by theme, in a great variety of media and techniques (video, painting, sculpture, graphic arts, film, photography, installation).
Text courtesy of the Réunion des musées nationaux – Grand Palais, the Centre Pompidou and the Musée national Picasso-Paris.
