Welcome to the exhibition “A Celebration of Picasso: the collection in a new light!”.
We asked British fashion designer Paul Smith to come up with an entirely new, fun way to display the museum’s collections. Come and explore! Experience Pablo Picasso’s work as it unfolds before your eyes in all its amazing diversity.

1.3 Cubism

Pablo Picasso, "Le Sacré-Cœur", winter 1909–10, oil on canvas, MP30

Can you see how the building looks out of shape? You can just about recognise it as the famous Basilica of the Sacré-Cœur in Paris. At this time, Pablo Picasso had just invented Cubism, a way of depicting the world that showed every side of an object at once, by breaking it down into geometrical shapes. This combination of triangles, rectangles and semi-circles allows you to see the all different sides of the building at the same time. So thanks to Picasso you can walk right around the Sacré-Cœur without moving an inch!

1.4 Around Les Demoiselles d’Avignon

Pablo Picasso, "Femme aux mains jointes" (étude pour “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon”), spring 1907, oil on canvas, MP16

Does this work look finished to you? The figure has been drawn with a few brushstrokes and the white background is painted over other outlined figures. This painting and most of the others on show in this room are studies. Pablo Picasso made them to help him prepare to paint Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, which has become one of his most famous works. That painting is now in the Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA.

Look at this detail from Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. Do you see any similarities between these two women and our seated figure here?

1.5 Assemblages and collages

Pablo Picasso, "Nature morte à la chaise cannée", spring 1912, oil on canvas, oilcloth, rope, MP36

This is a still life, an artwork that portrays objects and aspects of everyday life, things like food, crockery or flowers. Here Pablo Picasso depicts a table seen from above. Look more closely. Is everything painted? No. You can see some rope and a piece of oilcloth with a pattern like the seat of a cane chair. As well as painting the canvas, Picasso has glued things onto it. This technique is called collage. And this particular collage was the first one in the history of ar

1.6 Blue Melancholy

Pablo Picasso, "Portrait d’homme", winter 1902–03, oil on canvas, MP5

How does this figure make you feel? He looks quite miserable, sitting there with folded arms, drooping shoulders and a blank stare. The main colour in this painting is blue, creating a cold, gloomy atmosphere. We find the same style in other paintings by Pablo Picasso. He associated blue with sadness and used it to reflect his own feelings. His paintings from this time belong to what is known as his Blue Period.

1.7 All the World’s a Stage

Pablo Picasso, "Paul en Pierrot", 28 February 1925, oil on canvas, MP84

In 1918, alongside his Cubist works, Pablo Picasso went back to a more realist style of painting. His portraits started looking like their subjects again, as in this painting of his son Paul. Do you recognise Paul’s costume? He’s dressed as Pierrot, a famous character from Italian theatre who is always dressed all in white with a white face. The setting looks a bit like a theatre, with the red floor and green curtain, although the open window and the balcony suggest it’s a family home. So who would Paul be performing to? An audience? His parents?

2.1 Biomorphism

Pablo Picasso, "Femme au fauteuil rouge", 27 January 1932, oil on canvas, MP138

Look at the woman in the red armchair. The different parts of her body have become detached and seem to be magically balancing on a sphere. At the top is a bizarrely shaped head, then a cylindrical neck and a rectangular bust, with elongated shapes for the arms, all arranged in an unstable pile. If you took away one of the spheres everything would collapse.

2.2 In Times of War

Pablo Picasso, "Jeune Garçon à la langouste", 21 June 1941, oil on canvas, MP189

This boy looks disturbing, doesn’t he? His face and hands are distorted and his grimacing appearance is emphasised by his wonky eyes and small pointy teeth. Pablo Picasso painted this picture during the Second World War. Although he isn’t painting the fighting here, he is criticising the brutality of war. Look how helpless this lobster seems in the hands of the boy crushing it. The grey and brown tones give the whole painting an impression of sadness.

2.4 Classical painter

Pablo Picasso, "La Flûte de Pan", autumn 1923, oil on canvas, MP79

Look at the man playing music on the right. Do you recognise his instrument? It’s a panpipe, an object made from reeds in different sizes that belonged to Pan, the god of shepherds in Greek mythology. Unlike the other artworks you may have seen in the previous rooms, this painting is more classical. The bodies of the men are truer to reality. The setting is simplified, though: the sea and sky are represented by two blue strips that flatten the landscape.

2.6 Bestiary

"The Chèvres de profil" by Villers, 1954–61, gelatin silver prints, APPH2199 to APPH2228; APPH2244

The photographer André Villers produced these images without using a camera. How did he do it? He began by placing a shape cut out by Pablo Picasso onto a piece of light-sensitive paper, shone a light on the whole thing, and then immersed the paper in different chemical baths, which was the final stage in photographic development at that time. This meant Picasso’s cut-out was used like a stencil: the covered part remained white and the area exposed to the light darkened to reveal the goat. This is known as a photogram. 

Stripes

Pablo Picasso, "La Lecture", 2 January 1932, oil on canvas, MP137

Pablo Picasso painted the theme of the “woman in an armchair” throughout his career. In this version, you will find a portrait of one of his companions, Marie-Thérèse Walter. Whenever he depicts her, her body is most often transformed into an assembly of curved and rounded shapes, like in this painting. Did you notice how the elements that make up the canvas respond to each other? The yellow bracelet recalls the stripes on the armchair, the purple colour of her skin is picked up in the picture frame, and her green breast echoes the shade of her nose.

3.1 Imaginary journeys

Pablo Picasso, "Tête d’homme", autumn 1908, gouache on panel, MP25

Compare this painting with the masks on display in this room. Can you spot any similarities between them? They have geometric features: a triangle for the nose, a halved oval for the mouth and eyes, and semi-circles to indicate the hairline. In 1907, a year before he created this painting, Pablo Picasso discovered African arts in a Paris museum. Fascinated by their shapes, he bought masks and sculptures for inspiration. This is why the figure depicted here looks more like a wooden sculpture than a living being.

3.3 The 1950s

Pablo Picasso, "Footballeur", spring 1961, Cannes, cut sheet metal, folded and painted polychrome, MP362

What is this figure running after? A ball! What you’re looking at here is a footballer. He may look fragile, but he’s made of a metal plate that has been folded and painted. How did Pablo Picasso make this kind of sculpture? By using a clever process: after creating a paper model, he asked a craftsman to make a stronger version of it out of metal. That way there was no risk of the sculpture getting torn!

3.4 Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe

Pablo Picasso, "Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe", 3 March 1960–20 August 1960, oil on canvas, MP215

What are these figures doing? They are having a picnic by the water. To create this artwork, Pablo Picasso was inspired by a famous 19th-century painting, Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe, by the French painter Édouard Manet, which is on display at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. He also produced several other versions, some of which can be seen in this room. Compare this version with the reproduction of Manet’s painting. Did you spot the figure on the left? He’s almost disappeared among the leaves! 

3.5 Picasso’s striped Breton shirt

Pablo Picasso, "L’Artiste devant sa toile", 22 March 1938, charcoal on canvas, MP172

Did you recognise Pablo Picasso? He has drawn himself painting. He’s wearing a striped Breton shirt; his favourite outfit. In the history of art, painters have often depicted themselves at work, with their palettes, brushes and easels. But Picasso breathes new life into this tradition here. Notice how he has exaggerated parts of his body: he has big almond eyes and a long arm coming straight out of his chest and appearing to move across the canvas while the rest of his body is motionless.

3.6 The late period: 1969–72

Pablo Picasso, "Vieil Homme assis", 26 September 1970–14 November 1971, oil on canvas, MP221

The works of art on display in this room were created by Pablo Picasso towards the end of his life. They were not very popular with the general public; some people even claimed that Picasso had become too old to paint as his works looked increasingly messy. Did you notice the paint drips on this picture? We get the feeling that Picasso was working very quickly, without wiping his brush every time he changed colour. It’s almost as if he wanted to paint as much as possible before he died.

3.7 Picasso on show

Pablo Picasso, "Le Jeune Peintre", 14 April 1972, oil on canvas, MP228

The visit ends with this painting, which is one of the final works produced by Pablo Picasso. You are probably looking at a self-portrait because the figure is an artist: he is holding a brush in his left hand and a palette in the other as he sports a broad smile. But why portray himself as a teenager when Picasso was 91 at the time? Maybe he was thinking back to when he started out as a young artist and the way he made his mark on the history of painting.