Introduction

We are in the company of the president of the Musée national Picasso-Paris, Cécile Debray who is going to explain the choices behind this new display of works.

“The new presentation of the collections here at the Musée Picasso has enabled us to fulfil our main objective which is to present Picasso to the public, to all kinds of visitors, in an educational and comprehensive manner; and I believe that it’s the characteristics or qualities of our collection […] that allow us to show Picasso from his early career and right up until the end, demonstrating all the different facets of his creativity, or in other words all the different techniques, whether it’s sculpture, drawing, painting, engraving, ceramics… And equally, on a more personal level, because the collection came from Picasso’s studio and we have a very large graphic art collection, with lots of sketchbooks, drawings, preparatory studies that allow us to dive into the creative universe of the artist Picasso and follow his thought processes.”

Does this new display have a common theme, a specific dimension you were keen to show?

“We have paid particular attention to the new way in which we were going to show these works again, perhaps from a more cultural perspective, more in line with the current questioning around the figure of Picasso himself, and so […] a cultural approach, which means an approach that enables us to see Picasso’s work within its historical context […], or in other words through literature, cinema, photography, but also historical because there’s the Spanish Civil War, the First World War, all of this history, which in the end resonates through Picasso’s work, and which I believe, allows the general public, not only to experience an artwork but also to experience the 20th century, because Picasso is the 20th century.”

“So this new presentation aims to be more open-ended, to show Picasso within his era. It also takes a look at some of the key figures in his entourage, or focuses on a specific moment, an exhibition, or a particular point in Picasso’s past. This approach has allowed us to offer a much broader perspective, perhaps more inclusive too, because there are quite a few women, leading figures, who shared his life -Gertrude Stein, Dora Maar, Françoise Gilot, to name but three -, and who each deserve to be considered in greater detail.”

2 The Artist before his Canvas and The Painter with Palette at his Easel

Self-portraits are a recurring theme in Western art history and artists often chose to represent themselves at work. And so here, the painter is facing his easel, holding his palette, brush in hand, captured in this creative moment.
You can see two self-portraits in this room that show Picasso at work, painting. The two works were made ten years apart; the first, entitled Painter with Palette at his Easel, was made in 1928, whilst the second, The Artist before his Canvas, dates from 1938.
On the one hand, both are composed and framed in a similar way; the artist has painted himself half-length, sitting or standing in front of his easel. Seen from a three-quarter view or in profile but most importantly, he is holding his precious brushes in his hand.
On the other hand, the two works are stylistically very different. The first one is based on a principal of flatness. Picasso eliminates any form of volume or perspective, working his canvas in flat blocks of simple colours; grey, beige and white. A few straight lines structure these coloured planes by creating geometric shapes. The painter’s body is resumed down to a triangle whilst his face is contoured by a vaguely circular shape with one eye placed above the other. On the right of the composition, a scroll-shape represents the armchair Picasso is sitting on.
In the second composition, the colours have disappeared. Picasso returns to the primacy of drawing. There is also a return to volume and a more “traditional” form of figuration. Picasso still deforms the viewpoints but the motifs adhere more closely to the principals of imitation.
Whatever the style, these self-portraits reveal the painter’s capacity for representing his work as an artist.

The Death of Casagemas

In 1900, Picasso decided to go to Paris for the first time. The young painter, not yet 19, made the trip with a friend whom he had met a few months earlier. His name was Carles Casagemas. The latter came from a wealthy family and was also a painter. He helped Picasso financially when he arrived in the artistic capital, mainly by paying the rent on the studio they had in Montmartre. This new life was full of friendly competitiveness and exhilarating bohemian soirées. Despite the financial difficulties -when he first moved in, Picaso couldn’t afford to pay the rent himself -, the artist enjoyed this Parisian lifestyle. He sold his first works the same year, frequented the bars and cafés on Boulevard de Clichy, visited the World Fair and discovered the museums and galleries of Paris. But for Casagemas, the passion of those early days soon gave way to a tragic end, culminating 17 February, when he tried to kill the woman he loved, the model Germaine Gargallo, before turning the gun on himself. Picasso was in Madrid that day and not Paris. When he heard the news he was devastated. This suicide had a huge impact on him. Several weeks later, he began painting works directly linked to the tragic event. The one you can see here shows Casagemas, tightly framed, lying on his deathbed. You can clearly see the bullet wound on his temple and only his pallid face is poking out from the shroud covering his body. In the background, the candle lighting the wake, painted in broad Van Gogh-style brushstrokes, gives off a vibrant and colourful glow. Saturated with warm colours, a shadow hangs over the wounded side of Casagemas’ face, dulling the light from the background and tingeing it blue. Blue had appeared in the painter’s colour palette a few months earlier and with the death of his friend, these cold colours began dominating his works thus marking the start of Picasso’s blue period.

The Jester

You are now standing in front of the first sculpture made by Pablo Picasso. But we should clarify one thing; the bronze you are looking at was made a few years after the original version, dating from 1902. At the time, Picasso was living with the poet Max Jacob in the 11th arrondissement in Paris. One evening, as he was coming out of a show at the Médrano circus, Picasso decided to make a sculpted portrait of his friend. But rapidly, this portrait became a more universal figure wearing a typical tri-fold jester’s hat. And so, Max Jacob was transformed into a kind of medieval clown, this famous Jester, who gave the work its name. The bust has an almost grainy finish that catches the light and creates different surface effects. The skin on the face is smoother; Picasso has focused on the volumes, the positive and negative spaces. You can see this particularly in the way he has hollowed out the eye sockets which have no eyeballs, seemingly plunged into darkness. Although there is a hint of a smile, this Jester has an unfathomable expression. This paradoxical attitude echoes the stylistic treatment of the work itself, full of contrasts. Made up of bumps and hollows, shadowy and raised areas, this bust is reminiscent of Auguste Rodin’s late 19th-century sculpted portraits.

Picasso the collector

In this room, we can see several non-western sculptures that once belonged to Picasso. Juliette Pozzo, head of the private collection at the Musée Picasso-Paris, can you tell us a bit more about “Picasso the collector”:

“Thanks to accounts from his family and friends, we know that Picasso started collecting a wide range of objects quite early on, with different provenances, and very different in nature. […] Picasso was used to gathering stuff and hoarding objects which he found for example at flea markets, or that people gave to him and which were often objects that weren’t worth a lot. These might be objects from popular culture, or even little chromolithographs, which were small paintings sold in the street, or they might also be clothes, ties, pieces of fabric. So we know that Picasso had a taste for collecting objects and curiosities very early on.”

So what triggered this move to non-western art?

“We know for example, that around 1905, he discovered a small Vili statuette thanks to Henri Matisse. We also know that Picasso, who observed Gauguin’s work very closely, became interested in this distant culture and that he already had this taste for non-western cultures prior to 1906-1907. In fact, in 1907 there was a shift, because we know from his own account that at the Musée de l’Homme, at the Trocadéro, he discovered a room where Oceanic and African sculptures were displayed, and as he told one of his companions, Françoise Gilot, he was captivated, he truly experienced a visual shock […] at the Trocadéro, looking at these non-western sculptures.”

Picasso wasn’t the only one to become interested in these objects at this period, was he?

“Like many others, Picasso was influenced by the rediscovery or discovery of these objects, borrowing in some ways their shapes and spirit. Probably what was different about Picasso, is that he saw an almost shamanic dimension in these objects. Even though he knew very little about the origins of these objects or their ethnographic use, and very early on he understood the kind of social, magical, and almost religious power that these objects could convey.” To find out more about how these non-western objects were understood culturally at this time, press the green key.

Seated nude

Painted during the summer of 1907 in Paris, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon marked a major milestone in western art history. In fact, it was with this painting that for the first time, Picasso explored in a determined and radical way, the formal experimentations that were to fuel Cubism. The women we can see are represented in a completely innovative manner. In particular, they are composed of simplified geometric forms which can be disconcerting at first glance. The Seated Nude you are looking at now belongs to an outstanding corpus of studies and experiments that resulted in the Demoiselles. Carried out in the winter of 1906-1907, this study shows how the artist broadened his cultural references at this time. Inspired both by African masks and Oceanic statuary, as well as the ancient Iberic art he discovered during a trip to the Louvre, Picasso developed this new way of drawing bodies and expressing volume. Using geometrization, he reduced the facial features down to nothing more than curves and angles. The eye sockets are hollowed out. It is even hard to discern the gender of the models. Picasso opposed traditional anatomy with increasingly simplified forms. The chest becomes a spherical object, the arm and leg muscles are transformed into cylinders or tubes. Ovals, triangles, or crosses disguise the model’s calves, pubis or abdominals. Picasso added a few motifs to his composition that make reference to classical painting, such as the curtain in the foreground on the right. Although, in the final version of the Demoiselles d’Avignon, the painter abandoned this seated pose, we can still see the same geometrization of forms, pushed to breaking point this time, along with the reference to painting and classical statuary through the use of drapery.

Man with a Guitar

Painted in 1911, this Man with a Guitar is characteristic of what art historians have named “Analytical Cubism”. But what does this term mean and why this reference to analysis? If you observe this work, you can rapidly make out the two main ideas behind Cubism; geometrization and fragmentation. The man holding the guitar, along with the décor around him, are treated in a geometric manner. These shapes create planes, slotting together, upsetting our normal perception of volume and distance based on perspective. The man with a guitar is the result of this agglomeration of planes, this fragmentation, showing him from a variety of different angles. Picasso also used colour to add to these formal effects; a reduced colour palette going from beige to brown, grey to ochre. By breaking up the motif and limiting his colour palette, the painter forces us to recreate an image of reality in our minds. Reading the title often helps us to understand what we are looking at. Here, figuration is pushed to the boundaries of abstraction.

Glass of Absinthe

A lump of sugar, a spoon placed on what looks like a wine glass; these are the three elements that make up this sculpture, created by Picasso in the spring of 1914. A few weeks later, his art dealer and gallerist Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler decided to have six bronzes cast from the first wax model. Picasso then reworked each of these bronzes, painting them in a different way. Hence, the version presented here, a rare loan from the Centre Pompidou, is covered in paint mixed with sand on the upper part, setting it apart from the other versions in the series. A Cubist sculpture hides behind this Glass of Absinthe. Like the paintings of the same style, it plays with the codes of representation and figuration. To imitate the transparency of the glass, Picasso has chosen a spiral form, composed of positive and negative spaces. The sand covering the glass is a nod to the very essence of this material as it is one of its main raw ingredients. But Picasso did not just have fun with the motif, he also played with the representation itself, with the very idea of sculpture. And so, the absinthe spoon is a real spoon. In art history these objects are called “ready-mades” literally meaning that they are “already made” or “already done”. So they are objects that have already been manufactured and used in artworks “just as they are”. The sugar lump is actually a life-size reproduction of a lump of sugar, a perfect imitation. With his Glass of Absinthe, Picasso combines several levels of thought; this sculpture questions both art itself and how it is represented.

Still Life with Chair Caning

Do you remember the Man with a Guitar, we saw earlier? This highly geometric and extremely fragmented painting illustrated the first phase of Cubism known as Analytical Cubism. The work in front of you now, Still Life with Chair Caning, is emblematic of Synthetic Cubism, the second phase. But how is it synthetic? Because this Cubism incorporates references to the real world by using diverse and varied motifs; these might be painted or drawn, like the slice of lemon, the wine glass, or even the letters “JOU”, that reminds us of newspaper type. These elements make us think of those still lifes that depict the corner of a table with various objects placed on it. But in this work, figuration is not just painted; for the first time in the history of western art history it is also stuck on. For example, this waxed tablecloth is used to represent chair caning. This plastic invention is what makes this work so artistically valuable, and today, one of the icons of the Musée Picasso-Paris. There is another real element directly incorporated into the work; rope. The latter echoes the cord decorating a pedestal table in Picasso’s studio. In this Still Life with Chair Caning, the references to reality are seemingly dotted around the pictorial space and are no longer solely governed by a principle of composition, based on the fragmentation of geometric planes.

The Venus of Gas

“An object and a sculpture can be the same thing”

This was a quote from Picasso, reported by André Malraux in 1974, in his book La Tête d’obsidienne. On numerous occasions throughout his career, Picasso attempted to reappropriate the function of objects. In the case of this Venus of Gas, created in 1945, Picasso used a gas ring which he simply placed vertically. Hence, it became a kind of archaic figurine, with its legs firmly anchored into the ground, its round belly -a symbol of fecundity-, and slender neck. This artistic gesture that involved re-appropriating an everyday object to bring it into the field of art had been “invented” by Marcel Duchamp in 1913, with a bicycle wheel. But unlike Duchamp’s ready-mades, Picasso’s works retained a symbolic and metaphoric vocation, closely linked to their original form. The artist saw these objects as figurative sculptures in the making; and so, the Venus of Gas was a gas burner transformed into a forgotten ancient goddess. The symbolic value of this work is also linked to the context of its creation. At the end of the Second World War, the numerous shortages, and in particular of coal, had a huge impact on civilian comfort. In winter, the gas burner could be associated with a lost or desirable heat source. At the same time, fire and gas could be found both on the battle field and in concentration camps; from this point on, the Venus of Gas became the goddess of an ambivalent form of fecundity. With her rounded forms, she is the carrier of myth and regeneration, but she is equally the symbol of a society capable of self-destruction.

Portrait of Olga MP55

In the winter of 1917, Pablo Picasso travelled to Italy. Accompanied by the writer and poet Jean Cocteau, he would meet Serge de Diaghilev, show creator and organiser, who went down in history for directing the Russian Ballet company. These ballets were put to music by some of the most daring composers of their time, such as Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, Erik Satie or even Igor Stravinsky. For the stage sets, Diaghilev called on innovative painters like Marie Laurencin, Henri Matisse or even… Pablo Picasso. And Picasso’s trip to Italy was linked to one of these performances, entitled Parade. In Rome, the artist visited all the museums and ancient sites. Whilst working alongside Diaghilev, he fell in love with one of the dancers from the Russian Ballet, Olga Khokhlova. Less than a year later, Picasso and Olga Khokhova married. But before this, in the spring of 1918, he made several portraits, including the one on show here of Olga sitting in a armchair in an undetermined setting. But we do already know this place. It was the studio in Montrouge where Picasso lived and worked. This is where he took a photo of his seated model, one which he would use as a reference for this painting. This portrait contrasts strongly with those you saw earlier; here, Picasso makes a clear and idealised return to figuration, in a work somewhat reminiscent of paintings by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. You can see this particularly in the smooth milky skin, or the way Olga’s hip is tilted to one side, leaning on the back of the chair, the detail of the drapery and the organic-inspired motifs on the fabric of her dress.

The Lovers MP62

In 1919, a year after painting the portrait of Olga in his Montrouge studio, Picasso painted this canvas, called The Lovers. As you can see, the classicism that ran through the portrait appears to have completely disappeared here. Once again, the painter returns to a more deconstructed image, both schematic and simplified. Set in a bourgeois interior decorated with cladding on the walls, a couple are dancing in front of a chaise longue and a pedestal table. The bodies and the décor have no depth; they are simply planes laid one on top of the other, echoing one of the fundamental principles of Cubism. On the ground, a page of the newspaper L’intransigeant is being trodden on by the dancer; this could be Picasso’s way of snubbing the critics, who only a few months earlier saw him as favouring a “return to order”. Not entirely Cubist, nor classical, this painting reveals Picasso’s capacity to free himself from convention, refusing to restrict himself to a particular style or school. By writing “Manet” in the upper right-hand corner of his canvas, the artist equally masters the art of reference. Indeed, the composition of these Lovers might make us think of a painting by Manet, entitled Nana. In this work, with a similar frame and bourgeois décor, there is also a woman in a dress and a man wearing a tuxedo. Although there is no official link, Picasso shared Manet’s desire to break with convention. Here, he pays tribute to a painter who had already caused something of a sensation in his day.

The Bathers MP61

Men and women bathing has always been a recurrent theme in western art, and in the work of Picasso. Throughout his life, the artist focused on this subject in diverse compositions and in a variety of styles. Whether it was in a completely classical vein or in a virtually abstract or Cubist manner, Picasso worked on this theme combining two key elements; the human body and water. In the summer of 1918, Picasso decided to put bathing into a completely contemporary context; the leisure society, now booming at seaside resorts along the French coastline. He chose the very chic seaside town of Biarritz, popularised by Empress Eugénie during the second half of the 19th century, and went there along with his wife Olga for their honeymoon. Moreover, you can just see the town’s lighthouse in the background, rising up from the rocky coastline. Picasso has depicted three female figures on the beach. They are easily identifiable thanks to the colours of their bathing costumes but also their different positions. Whilst the first two have traditional poses -seen from behind holding their hair back and reclining like odalisques-, the third figure, with the striped bathing suit, seems to be in a strange position. Her body curved, arms raised and face turned towards the sky, she seems to be trying to protect herself from an invisible danger – or perhaps she is just simply dancing.

The Salon de Jupiter

You have just entered the former entrance hall of the apartments that once belonged to the first owner of the site, Pierre Aubert de Fontenay. The stucco and stone décor stretches out over the doors and arches featuring garlands of flowers, cherubs, ancient goddesses and… Jupiter, the king of the Olympian gods, who gave his name to this room. The latter is depicted with his attributes, the eagle and lightning bolt, and is facing his wife Juno, reclining near a peacock. The other gods present are Minerva, Apollo, Diana, Mars, Ceres and Bacchus. By adding some ancient touches to his décor, Pierre Aubert de Fontenay reflected the classical fashions of his time. The sculptors who worked on this Salon during the second half of the 17th century, are those who also worked on the Château de Versailles, for King Louis XIV.

Three Women at the Spring MP74

In this sanguine drawing on canvas, Picasso plays with the stylistic codes associated with painting and its subjects. Used by classical painters in the 17th and 18th centuries, a sanguine is a work or study made using earthy red, orange or beige chalk, pencil or pastel. This technique allowed artists to work on the volume of models’ bodies; which is precisely what Picasso does here with his Three Women at the Spring. Even the subject of the work seems to combine two of the great leitmotivs of art history; one was the Three Graces, a naked female trio, and the other, the Danaids, women who were condemned to pour water from their amphorae into a bottomless vase. Classical subject, style classicist; Picasso has borrowed here some of the traditional motifs associated with the painting of the masters, such as the folds in the drapery, the amphorae, or the poses of the three women. However, the artist moves away from these influences by deforming the female anatomy; the bodies are much more solid, strangely tubular in places. Their extremities, the hands and feet, are exaggeratedly large. The facial features, in particular the ones seen in profile, are simplified using emphasized lines and contours. This manner of drawing gives the figures a sculptural dimension which is found in a number of works dating from this period.

Simounet ramp

Over a period of six years, between 1979 and 1985, the architect Roland Simounet reflected on how to reorganise the Hôtel Salé, which was preparing to welcome the collections for the new Musée Picasso Paris. The challenge was to respect the original décor of the building whilst at the same time creating a new flow by modifying the rooms and the elevations. So, on the first floor, the architect favoured high sloping ceilings that allowed visitors to admire the outstanding framework with inverted beams, a visual testimony to 17th-century construction techniques. Fluidity and multiple viewpoints were the key words for this project. The Simounet ramp, linking the first floor to the second, is one of the most remarkable examples.

The Painter and his Model MP96

Where is the painter, where is the model? Difficult at first glance to make out the two figures behind the title of this oil on canvas. And yet if you look more closely, you can just make out a palette on the right side of the canvas and above it, a face with eyes covered in spikes. It is in fact the artist himself. The figure of the model is much more diluted into the composition; a disproportionate foot can be seen at the bottom of the work, whilst on the left, there are two different sized hands. Picasso has also used flat blocks of colour to bring the studio to life, laid on in tones of grey, beige and white. Between the two subjects of the painting the artist has woven a network of black curved lines of different thicknesses, crisscrossing each other and sometimes knotting together at intersections. But these lines, separated from the colours, were above all a way for Picasso to undermine the principles of painting which associated both of them with a figurative objective, based on the imitation of reality. And so, Picasso approaches the theme of the artist and his model in a completely new way. And these interlaced lines remind us of another project he was working on at that time; the monument for Apollinaire. You can see the scale models for this work in this room.

Guitar MP87 and MP 86

“If surrealism must chart itself a moral line of conduct, it needs only find where Picasso has gone and where he will pass again; I hope by saying that I show my high standards”.

In 1928, when the leader of Surrealism, André Breton, published his pioneering work, Le surréalisme et la peinture, he chose Picasso as the example to follow. But why? Because from his first collages in the early 1910s, then several years later in 1926 with his two “guitars”, the Spanish artist dared to include everyday objects in his paintings, often provoking surprise even among his avant-garde artist friends. Moreover, in Picasso’s “relief-paintings”, objects or the signs they evoke are never “noble” objects. Here we find nails, mops, newspaper, or even bits of rope. This disturbing effect, based on the association of ideas and randomness, was at the very heart of the Surrealist doctrine defined by Breton in his 1924 Manifesto. Seemingly poor and minimalist in appearance, these collages actually had a highly expressive dimension. As you can see, the nails are turned towards the spectator. They echo the nails found on some non-western sculptures. During the first quarter of the 20th century, these objects intrigued the artists of the Parisian avant-garde. Picasso collected these masks and sculptures which he believed were inhabited by a magical power.

Picasso at Boisgeloup

This room focuses on a very specific period in Picasso’s career when he moved to Boisgeloup in the 1930s. Virginie Perdrisot, curator at the Musée Picasso-Paris, explains the reasons for this move away from the hustle and bustle of Paris;

“Boisgeloup is a Norman castle near Gisors, around sixty km north-west of Paris. On 10 June 1930, Picasso bought this manor as it was the perfect setting for his creativity at that time. It was off the beaten track, surrounded by nature and offered Picasso all the space he needed to set up his studios for painting, sculpture, engraving… So Boisgeloup was a kind of creative interlude in Picasso’s life, […] between the summer of 1930 and up until 1936, as Picasso left the Boisgeloup estate in the autumn of 1936.”

What changed in Picasso’s sculpture at Boisgeloup?

“The thing that characterises the period at Boisgeloup in relation to his previous sculptural creations, is that Boisgeloup really initiated a dialogue with his painting. His painting, or rather his sculpted paintings, in fact. We find exactly the same formal vocabulary, the same relationship with the female figure, the figure of Marie-Thérèse which had taken over his artistic production since she met Picasso, in 1927. And so, in the 1930s, there was really a relentless dialogue between painting and sculpture, but also the graphic arts, because his quest for curves, the counter curves we find in his sculpture, we can see them with the same formal vocabulary as in his painting and drawings.”

Where did Picasso find his formal references at that time?

“So what is also completely specific about this period at Boisgeloup, and moreover what gave its name to this room, is the inspiration of prehistory. […] We can absolutely say that Boisgeloup was a kind of synthesis of the arts in fact, that Picasso went back to the very source of art at Boisgeloup and was able to find a syncretic form between art, nature and prehistory, culture.”

Head of a Woman MP301

This Head of a Woman is one of the many sculptural variations of Marie-Thérèse Walter Picasso produced at his estate at Boisgeloup, from 1930 on. In these plaster works, the artist reconstructs human anatomy by simplifying its volumes, and above all, reducing it down to the essential; here, the Head of a Woman is made up of an excessively long neck and a face that appears to be in two parts; the first lower part, has an oval jawline, the second, upper part, springs out of the formidable excrescence of the woman’s oblique nose. Picasso has hollowed a deep mouth out of this face with more lightly sculpted eye sockets. The protruding nose recalls the features found on certain masks made by the Gaba people in western Africa, of which Picasso owned an example. This first influence was combined with the influence of prehistorical statuary, as Virginie Perdrisot reminds us:

“Picasso was fully aware of the discovery of the Venus of Lespugue in 1922, and also the different prehistoric Venuses that had been published in the magazines that Picasso fervently read, such as Cahiers d’art for example. And so, this vocabulary of prehistoric forms, these idols of fertility and fecundity were also a […] very strong part of Picasso’s creations and moreover, Marie-Thérèse Walter was to become a kind of fertility idol herself in fact, as there is a very clear dialogue between the plaster sculptures Picasso created at this period and the Venus of Lespugue which you can also see in this room.” 

Woman in a Red Armchair MP138 and MP139

Painted just a few days or weeks apart in 1932, these two Women in a Red Armchair, testify to the plastic experimentation Picasso carried out in his studio at Boisgeloup. At this period, the artist explored the same theme of female portraits using two different mediums; painting and sculpture. And looking at these two works, it seems that it was the sculptural version of the woman that won in the end. Indeed, we can see the same principles of simplification that Picasso used in the composition for the Women’s Heads you saw earlier. The anatomy is reduced down to a vocabulary of signs and simple shapes, which appear to be treated completely separately from each other before being reorganised by the artist to form a body again. The feet and hands, chest and face are therefore easily identifiable, but their reconfiguration, made up of positive and negative spaces, as well as a radical play on volume, betrays Picasso’s desire to transform reality and make it look like sculpture.

Picasso and female portraits

This room reveals the importance of female portraiture in Picasso’s work. Johan Popelard, curator at the Musée Picasso-Paris, tells us more about this subject:

“Portrait in general is one of the genres most frequently found in Picasso’s work, much more than landscape for example, and in fact, from when he started working and right up to the end. There are also a certain number of masculine portraits, male portraits […] but the kind of portraits that dominated Picasso’s work were portraits of women, or several women to be more precise. […] And so, at the start of the century, he painted a wide range of representations of Fernande Olivier, then, […] in the 1920s, Olga Khokhlova, Picasso’s wife and former dancer with the Russian Ballet, became his favourite model. And in the 1930s, a major cycle of works appeared around the figure of Marie-Thérèse Walter, who was Picasso’s companion at that time. We can find her in sculpture […], drawings, and in engravings too, but painting was also a medium he chose for this figurative work, for heads or faces.”

And in this room, we can not only see portraits of Marie-Thérèse Walter, but also of another woman who was very important to Picasso.

“In the late 1930s, we see another model appear, Dora Maar, who from that moment on and throughout the war years, would become Picasso’s favourite model. […] These two models have often been opposed, like two antithetical elements in Picasso’s art; Marie-Thérèse Walter on the one hand reflecting a kind of gentleness, the blond model in a form of pacified calm, and on the other Dora Maar, a more tormented brunette, represented in more sombre atmospheres. In reality, if we look more closely, we can see that this opposition is often highly contradictory. […] The models overlap, look alike, share a certain number of common features, gestures, that reappear regularly in Picasso’s work.”

Portrait of Dora Maar MP158 + Portrait of Marie-Thérèse Walter MP159

Made in the same year, these two portraits are of two woman who were dear to Picasso; on the one hand Marie-Thérèse Walter, who lived with the artist at Boisgeloup and became the focus of his experimentations on “women’s heads”, and on the other, Dora Maar, the painter and photographer with whom Picasso was romantically involved from 1935 onwards. The two women are both adopting a similar pose, almost as if they are mirroring each other; they are both sitting on an armchair in an empty room, one arm leaning on the chair, the other raised up to their face. The brown locks, red nails and lips tells us that this is Dora Maar, known for her frank and strong-willed character, whilst the blond hair of the second model with the blue-toned skin, reflects the calm tranquillity of Marie-Thérèse Walter. In addition to this play on colour, both portraits share more common characteristics than differences. Indeed, the compositions are created around the same principle; a half-bust portrait, set in a room that only exists to provide a deformed and disquieting form of perspective. The faces are treated in the same way and rework Picasso’s sculptural experiments of the early 1930s; we understand the faces of the two women as a kind of conglomeration, an aggregation of both the face and profile. This way of “summing up” faces was one of the solutions Picasso had found in answer to a question that had been haunting him for many years; how can you represent a face, how can you translate what a face hides and reveals about the true identity of the model.

Picasso and engraving

Picasso often used engraving in his work. Johan Popelard looks back at the artist’s interest in this medium.

“Picasso’s first engraving […] dates back to the very end of the 19th century, in 1899, when Picasso was still very young. And after this first attempt, he gradually went back to engraving, in particular in 1905, and increasingly so in the 1930s as his work continued, and at the end of the 1960s, he made an extraordinary series of etchings. […] Right up until the end of his life, […] engraving remained a central focus of Picasso’s work.”

What type of engravings did Picasso make?

“So in some ways, there are two main bodies in Picasso’s engraved works. First, the engravings that stand alone, works in their own right, but which Picasso often created in cycles, series, sequences. And then there are the those incorporated into more complex objects, illustrated books. […] These engravings were made either specifically for an editorial project, or were ones which already existed and were reworked opportunely to be used as illustrations or rather I would say, to accompany texts by a poet, a writer.”

Exactly, and in this room you wanted to display one of these series of etchings that you evoked earlier; the Vollard Suite. What is this work?

“The Vollard Suite, which takes its name from the editor and gallerist who commissioned the work from Picasso, Ambroise Vollard […] is an extraordinary, imaginary work where we find all the themes Picasso was concerned with at that period, and in particular the main scene of the confrontation between the artist and his model in the studio. But, it was also the time when the minotaur figure emerged and became one of the main characters in Picasso’s work. The minotaur came from mythology but Picasso treated him in a variety of different ways, and in particular revealing his vulnerability. This is particularly noticeable throughout the Vollard Suite.”

Picasso and war

The works brought together in this room all evoke, in an allusive or more open manner, the political conflicts and wars that punctuated Picasso’s life. Johan Popelard tells us some more on this subject:

“War, the phenomenon of war, had a deep impact on Picasso’s work […] with the Spanish Civil War, which he experienced very directly and head-on. […] This period of civil war and the confrontations between the Spanish republicans, with whom Picasso shared the same commitments, and the Francoist troops who would finally dominate in Spain, was Picasso’s first real experience of war, and almost immediately and quite significantly, it appeared in his work.”

Of course, we think of Guernica, which is Picasso’s most famous work on this subject, but it’s not the only one is it?

“The Spanish Civil War can also be found in many other works; in the etching The Dream and Lie of Franco, or in other works, where less immediately perhaps, but noticeably nevertheless, war creeped into Picasso’s work.”

Then came the Second World War. At this time, Picasso chose not to go into exile like other artists who were living in Paris at the time.

“He chose to withdraw, a kind of inner exile, shutting himself away in many respects, in the studio at the Grands-Augustins in Paris which he had bought a short while before war broke out. […] Picasso’s situation was also very precarious throughout the war period; a foreigner living in France, and the symbol of “degenerate art” for most of the intellectual, artistic and political spectrum, who had the upper hand at this period, the whole of the far right.”

The Weeping Woman

To understand the symbolism behind this Weeping Woman, it’s essential to look first at the political context behind its creation. It’s 1937; the Spanish Civil War was raging and the town of Guernica had just been bombed by Nazi planes. Picasso actively supported the Spanish republicans, whilst the painter and photographer Dora Maar, with whom he shared his life at that time, moved in Communist and anti-fascist circles in Paris. Both deplored and feared the rise of nationalism in Europe. In his studio at the Grands-Augustins in Paris, just a few weeks after the bombing of Guernica, Picasso began his famous painting of the same name. Dora Maar took numerous photos to document the progress of this huge project. She had a ringside seat as Picasso created the different iconic motifs dispersed throughout his painting; the bull, the neighing horse, the dead soldier in the foreground, or the woman grieving the death of her child. Moreover, it was this last motif that was to haunt Picasso’s work during the remainder of 1937 and which, more often than not, embodied the traits of Dora Maar.

L’Aubade

In the spring of 1942, Picasso shut himself away in his studio at the Grands-Augustins. The Nazi troops and the French police tracked down and imprisoned any kind of political, intellectual or aesthetic resistance. To a certain extent, considered to be a “degenerate artist”, Picasso was one of the artists they targeted. The painter powerfully transcribed this oppressive climate in the work you are looking at now, L’Aubade, an exceptional loan from the Centre Pompidou. Set in an indeterminate interior with a low ceiling, composed of blacks and dark browns, Picasso has painted two very different characters. At the centre of the composition, you can make out a reclining figure, which through a typically Cubist perspective, appears to be seen both in profile and from the front. A kind of inanimate odalisque, she is lying on a striped, rigid-looking bed. By her side, the second figure is sitting, holding a mandolin. Tinged with blues and greys, she has just a hint of a smile. Her stringless and hence silent instrument, makes her look slightly absurd. What melody is this musician playing? Is it really an Aubade as the title of the work suggests, a romantic serenade played under a lover’s balcony? In a room without a window or light source with such sharp angles and rudimentary furniture, these seems very unlikely. The preparatory works Picasso made for this project appear to confirm this interpretation. There is hardly anything remaining from the initial studies which depicted a feminine figure languishing, in warm contrasting shades, as if the pictorial space of the final work had been completely taken over by anguish.  

Françoise Gilot

We are now going to leave the work of Picasso for a short while and concentrate more specifically on the work of one of the artists who shared his life; Françoise Gilot. Joanne Snrech, head curator of paintings at the Musée Picasso-Paris:

“We decided to devote a room to Françoise Gilot, firstly, because she died in 2023, so it was important for the museum to pay tribute to her with the major new display of its collections. Equally because she was someone who played a key role in the life of Picasso because she lived with him for ten years. But above all, as we are in a museum, because we were interested in presenting her work as she was an artist who had an extremely long career, who started painting in the 1940s and continued up until the 2010s, even into the early 2020s. And we wanted to highlight this work, which developed over the decades -she tried her hand at several techniques-, and to show it to the public because it’s often a part of her personality that we know nothing about.”

Her work was enriched by her relationship with Picasso, but not only that; that was something you wanted to show too, wasn’t it?

“In the beginning, we can see a Picasso-like influence, but not just that; she also observed Henri Matisse’s work a lot, […] she frequented artists from the Réalités nouvelles group, she looked at the work of Nicolas de Staël […]. And gradually, in particular from the 1960s on, and throughout the second half of the 20th century, her artistic identity became progressively more well-defined and she completely broke away from what Picasso had done.”

You were very interested in one work in particular in this room, it’s called The Return Path.

“It’s an abstract painting, but its title, The Return Path, tells us that it was part of the labyrinth cycle, one of the major cycles of works Françoise Gilot worked on in the early 1960s and which, simply through a play on colours and forms, tells the story of the myth of Theseus. So it’s a very interesting series, emblematic of how Françoise Gilot went back and forth between figuration, abstraction and at the same time her interest in mythology which remained ever present over the decades, and so it perfectly embodies François Gilot’s artistic personality.”

The archives at the Musée Picasso-Paris

During your visit, you have also been able to discover a variety of objects from the museum’s archives. Cécile Godefroy, head of the Picasso Study Centre at the Musée Picasso-Paris, is going to tell us some more about it.

“The Pablo Picasso archives were donated by Picasso’s heirs in 1992 and entrusted to the Musée Picasso in order to be studied, classified and displayed within the framework of exhibitions or more permanent displays, as is the case today with the new presentation of the collection. They originate from Picasso’s studio collection. We estimate that there are around 200,000 pieces. 200,000 pieces which the artist kept throughout his life and over the course of his various house moves.”

What is the nature of these archives?

“These archives highlight the artist’s personal life. For example, we can find personal records, train tickets, rent receipts, shopping lists, address books compiled over the years, but also reminders… […] all of these elements document his private life, […] but of course also his artistic career. […] The invitation cards, magazines, books that are also part of the artist’s personal archives, equally offer a very interesting and enlightening context for this artistic life, this artistic dynamic, that took place in Paris during the inter-war period and in which Picasso also played a very active part. […] Among these archives, there are some quite remarkable letters, written by Apollinaire to Picasso, or from Jean Cocteau, embellished with ink drawings which are artworks in their own right. And then there are these little bits and pieces which at certain moments were suddenly added to an assemblage, a collage, and which had real meaning for Picasso.”

Bull’s Head

The assemblage in front of you now is undoubtedly one of Picasso’s most famous works. This sculpture is iconic for two reasons. Firstly due to its extreme simplicity. Just two objects have been assembled together, and yet their evocative power is immediate. The second reason is the motif itself; the bull. We find this animal in Picasso’s work throughout his career. For him, bulls were full of meaning. They make up part of the mythological figure of the Minotaur which fascinated Picasso so much, but they are also one of the protagonists of bullfighting which the artist loved and which still symbolises today, a whole facet of Spanish culture.
Let’s go back to the origins of this work. It is said that Picasso had the idea for this comparison when he was strolling through a local dump; apparently, he stumbled on a pair of handlebars and a bicycle saddle. Once assembled by the artist, rather like putting letters together to form a word, these two objects gave birth to a new form; the famous Bull’s Head.

Ceramics

Picasso and ceramics go back a long way. This is what Virginie Perdrisot, curator at the Musée Picasso-Paris explains:

“Ceramics first appeared in Picasso’s work very early on, because Picasso started making ceramics in the late 19th century, when he was at La Coruña in Spain, and later he created other ceramics at the end of the 1920s, in 1929, when he worked alongside Jan Van Dongen creating two ceramic pieces, also in the collections […]. But it was really when Picasso moved to the South of France, to Vallauris, that he started making ceramics more intensely.”

Why did Picasso move to Vallauris?

“The reason Picasso moved to Vallauris was initially due to him meeting a couple called the Ramiés who owned the Madura pottery studio in Vallauris. It was Suzanne and Georges Ramié who gave Picasso the keys to the studio and enabled him to meet the potters and craftsmen who worked at the Madura pottery workshop.”

What kind of ceramics was the artist producing at that time?

“We can see two main categories of ceramics in Picasso’s production at Vallauris. Ceramics where Picasso would use the form as a support, as a surface for a décor, and ceramics where he would give the material its own form, often a completely unique form, invented by Picasso himself.”

What motifs or themes can we see on these objects?

“We find a whole range of motifs, which were either motifs inspired by Antiquity, because Picasso for example, called his dishes decorated with the heads of fauns, ‘Greekeries’ […], or another repertoire was animals […] often in the form of owls, doves, or bulls in fact; there are equally lots of images inspired by his Spanish homeland, where we find large plates decorated with bullfighting scenes, or forms directly taken from this Spanish vocabulary. These are the Spanish plates also on display in the dresser here in this room.”

Little Girl Jumping Rope

With this sculpture, Picasso managed to solve a problem that had been haunting him for many years; creating a sculpture that didn’t touch the ground. He wanted to defy the laws of gravity that ordinarily limited sculptors. Picasso found the solution by accident when he was watching a child playing with a skipping rope. The second the child jumped, when the rope hit the ground; that’s the moment he decided to represent. As you can see, the little girl is floating over the rope supporting her. But the rope is in fact a bent iron tube that supports the weight of the work. Picasso used assemblage to create this figure. This technique brings together objects from everyday life, removed from their initial function, as well as ready-mades, directly incorporated into the final work. If you look closely, you’ll see that the body of this Little Girl Jumping Rope is made up of a wicker basket, but she also has real shoes, mischievously placed on the wrong feet. Working with plaster allowed Picasso to associate these different elements and to vary the textural effects such as the little girl’s hair, obtained by pressing the material onto corrugated cardboard.

Picasso and his image

In this room we are transported to villa La Californie, situated in Cannes, where Picasso lived in the mid-1950s. Joanne Snrech, looks back at this outstanding building:

“Yes, it was a very large Belle Epoque villa with a series of three grand reception rooms on the ground floor, with very high ceilings and large windows overlooking the garden. You could see the sea from the first floor so it was really quite a remarkable building in itself, and perfect for representation and inviting artists, friends, art dealers, journalists, photographers, etc. And so it was a place where Picasso was regularly photographed, […] and it is the only one of Picasso’s studios where we have so much photographic documentation and which we can also today in fact represent, thanks to all the documents left behind.”

What did Picasso think about these images? Did he have an ulterior motive when he invited photographers to the place he lived and worked?

“At the moment when they were taken, Picasso didn’t necessarily want to directly control the way they were going to be used. On the other hand, it is interesting to notice how from one photographer to another, sometimes exactly the same scenes are photographed. Picasso strikes the same pose, but we can nevertheless see a desire to be seen in a certain light, with a certain number of tools, surrounded by certain works, because the same poses are reproduced sometimes several months apart.”

So we could say that Picasso became something of a star at this time in his life?

“It’s certain that Picasso became something of a star which I would say was something he felt rather ambiguous about because he both welcomed these photographers, and at the same time […] we can see that in a certain number of these photos; he is wearing shorts, he’s bare-chested […], he continued promoting this image of the simple artist, the artist close to other common mortals if I might say so… the artist who creates in a kind of poverty. Although we can clearly see that it’s not poverty because he’s in this grand villa, but let’s just say that he didn’t need to surround himself with much more than his artistic tools to show his mastery of art. People also talk about him being made into a star at this time because Mystère Picasso was presented at the Cannes Film Festival at around the same time. So there were photos of Picasso on the steps of the Cannes Festival, there was a glamourous side to the artist that was emphasised at that particular moment.”

Matisse, Still Life with Oranges

After the death of Henri Matisse in 1954, Picasso incorporated numerous references to the painter’s art in his works. It must be said that Matisse was a very old friend. In 1906, the poet and collector Gertrude Stein introduced him to Picasso. It was the start of a very long dialogue between the two great painters, made up of swapping artworks, sometimes ironic digs and convoluted tributes. Both part of the early 20th-century avant-gardes, the two men closely followed the artistic developments of each other’s art. Over time, they exchanged their artworks and the two men created veritable small collections. Matisse was the artist Picasso collected the most; in all he owned eight works, seven paintings and a sketch. This Still Life with Oranges dating from 1912, testifies to Matisse’s formal preoccupations at that time based on the use of colours and patterns, at a period when Picasso was developing a very different kind of art via his Cubist experimentations. Matisse was not the only painter Picasso collected; we can also find paintings by Renoir or even Cézanne in his private collection. All of these works nourished the Spanish painter’s own artistic practice. He observed them regularly and sometimes quoted them directly in his paintings; moreover, this is what we will see with the next commentated work, Seated Old Man, painted in 1970-71.

Seated Old Man

With his Seated Old Man, Picasso pays tribute to the painters he particularly appreciated. Picasso evokes three artists in this late work; Van Gogh, Matisse and Renoir. This homage can be seen both in the style and contents of the painting, because some motifs are direct quotations of other works. At first glance, our eye is drawn to the bright colours and lively brushwork; they evoke Vincent Van Gogh’s highly expressive manner of painting. The old man’s straw hat equally reminds us of the Dutch artist’s self-portraits.
Now look at the armchair on the right; it’s a direct reference to a painting by Henri Matisse, Blouse Roumaine, painted in 1940. In this oil on canvas, today housed at the Centre Pompidou, Matisse painted a woman sitting, wearing an embroidered blouse with puffed sleeves. And in fact, the arm of the chair in Picasso’s painting echoes the rounded form of these sleeves.
Finally, the stump of the left arm is a reference to Auguste Renoir. Indeed, Picasso had a photograph of Renoir in which his hand appeared deformed by arthritis.
When he painted his Seated Old Man, Picasso was more than 90 years old. Despite everything, he continued painting a lot. His posthumous exhibition, held in Avignon in 1973, brought together more than 150 new works made in less than two years, between 1970 and 1972. In his final creations, the artist mainly focused on the human figure, employing contrasting, saturated colours, rich textures and liberated gestures. Some critics of the time didn’t understand this new way of painting. Less than ten years later however, young artists would look at these late works and take inspiration for their own creations. And so, in 1981, Picasso was included in an exhibition at the Royal Academy in London, called “A New Spirit in Painting” where his works sat side by side with art by painters such as Georg Baselitz, Sigmar Polke, and even Gerhard Richter.

After Picasso

In this last room on our tour, Sébastien Delot, director of the collections at the Musée Picasso-Paris, looks back on the artistic and cultural heritage left by Picasso, and how his art practice is difficult to sum up:

“Picasso was indeed a multi-disciplinary artist. An artist with multiple facets. […] He was an artist who strove to use different mediums, whether it was painting or sculpture, and who also worked with musicians, dancers -who wrote poetry -, worked with film directors, photographers, in short; he tried his hand at all the techniques available during the 20th century. So Picasso is inevitable; one day or another, we will all undoubtedly cross paths with the work of Pablo Picasso. […] And I would say that contemporary artists cannot escape the aura of Pablo Picasso. Pablo Picasso intrigues, upsets, surprises, provokes, and never leaves people indifferent. And I think that is the great force of art; to spark curiosity, interest, intelligence and emotion. And Picasso is one of these great artists who brings together all of these qualities. […] And so contemporary artists, […] are inspired in a very direct way by his work, or, in a more oblique way, evoking Picasso in his cultural context and as an agitator, I would say, of form, of content and ideas. […] So Picasso masters the art of surprise and of being there where we don’t expect him. And I believe it’s this relationship between being at the centre of the action and always being slightly out of step that makes Picasso’s work so powerful.”

The story of the Hôtel Salé

The Musée national Picasso-Paris is housed on a most exceptional site; the Hôtel Salé. During your visit, you will be able to admire the different spaces and perspectives of this edifice dating from the second half of the 17th century. It was built by Pierre Aubert de Fontenay, a protegee of Louis XIV’s famous Superintendent of Finances, Nicolas Fouquet. Aubert was the “percepteur des gabelles”, which meant he collected salt taxes on behalf of the King. This is why the house quickly became known as the Hôtel Salé, meaning “salty” in French.
Built in the Marais district by an architect who was unknown at that time, Jean Boulier de Bourges, the Hôtel Salé is characteristic of Mazarine-style architecture, blending together classical and Baroque influences.
The main staircase at the Hôtel Salé is one of the building’s most outstanding features. It was based on Michelangelo’s design for the Laurentian library, in Florence, combining multiple perspectives and high-angle views. Take a closer look at its ambitious sculpted, stucco décor; it’s made up of eagles holding lightning bolts, cupids adorned in garlands, Corinthian pilasters and numerous gods.
The Musée national Picasso-Paris is the latest “occupant” of the Hôtel which has had a whole host of inhabitants over the years; the ambassador of Venice stayed here in the 18th century and in the 20th century, it was home to a wrought iron craftsman.
When it became a listed Historic Monument in 1968, it no longer had any of its original fixtures and fittings. And so, the building was restored back to its original layout, before eventually being turned into a museum by Roland Simounet.

Diego Giacometti at the Musée Picasso

As you walk past the central staircase, through the entrance hall, or the Salon de Jupiter, you will be able to admire pieces of furniture commissioned by the Centre National des Arts Plastiques from the artist Diego Giacometti for the opening of the Musée Picasso, in 1985. There are almost 50 pieces in total making up this outstanding ensemble. It includes benches, chairs, torch holders, tables, but also ceiling lights and chandeliers. Rather unusually, the seating is made from bronze whilst the lighting fixtures are in bronze or resin. From a decorative viewpoint, these furnishings evoke the world of Diego Giacometti, the brother of the painter and sculptor Alberto Giacometti. Here, we can see his taste for ancient art and its simple forms, but also some more imaginative touches such as the animals and flora adorning the ceiling lights. So you might see owls on some of the lanterns or leaves on the branches of the light fixtures.