From tomorrow until February 2nd the exhibition ‘Picasso the stranger’ opens to the public

From tomorrow until February 2, 2025, Palazzo Reale presents the exhibition “Picasso the Stranger”. Fifty years after his death, Picasso’s work is investigated and narrated through the lens of his status as an immigrant, rejected, censored by the nation that saw him grow and achieve success, France. Promoted by the Municipality of Milan – Culture, the exhibition was born from the original idea of ​​Annie Cohen-Solal, author of the biography “Picasso the Stranger” and scientific curator of the exhibition project, and is produced by Palazzo Reale with Marsilio Arte thanks to the collaboration of the Musée National Picasso-Paris (MNPP), the main lender, the Palais de la Porte Dorée, the Musée National de l’Histoire de l’Immigration and the Collection Musée Magnelli Musée de la céramique in Vallauris. The exhibition also benefits from the special curatorship of Cécile Debray, president of the MNPP. “Picasso the Stranger” presents more than 90 works by the artist, as well as documents, photographs, letters and videos, from the Mnpp, the Musée National de l’Histoire de l’Immigration in Paris and the Collection Musée Magnelli Musée de la céramique in Vallauris: a project that opens up to broad and very current reflections on the themes of hospitality, immigration and relationships with others. “This project represents an extraordinary opportunity to reflect not only on the work of one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century, but also on the historical and social dynamics that influenced his life and his creative path – said the Councilor for Culture Tommaso Sacchi -. Milan, with its tradition of hospitality and cultural openness, once again confirms itself as an international center in which art becomes a tool for dialogue and inclusion. The innovative approach of this exhibition invites us to rediscover Picasso in a new light, that of the man, as well as the artist, marked by the experience of being a foreigner”.

Born in 1881 in Malaga, Spain, Picasso arrived in Paris from Barcelona for the first time in October 1900 for the Universal Exhibition, without knowing a single word of French. In 1901 he was mistakenly registered under the number 74,664 as an anarchist under special surveillance. In 1904 he settled permanently in Paris, where he established himself as a leader of the cubist avant-garde. Although France became his home and his fame grew beyond national borders, the artist never obtained French citizenship. During the Spanish civil war, the artist created Guernica (1937), the immense canvas destined to become the universal banner of the anti-fascist resistance, so on 3 April 1940, fearing danger in a country where the Nazi invasion was imminent and he was merely an unwelcome foreigner, he submitted an application for naturalization to the French state, which was rejected. The Louvre’s great refusal of the donation of the “Demoiselles d’Avignon” dates back to 1929 and so, until 1947, only two works by Picasso were present in French public collections, despite his fame being established throughout the world. The climate of suspicion and exclusion to which he was a victim did not prevent him from settling in the south of France in 1955, preferring the provinces to the capital and thus anchoring himself definitively to the Mediterranean space to which he had always belonged. How did Picasso, in a century characterized by such great political turbulence, in a world torn apart by nationalisms of all kinds, in a country in which the security apparatus, the museum institutions and much of the artistic-cultural environment distrusted him, manage to impose his aesthetic revolutions? The Milan exhibition answers these questions, beyond the purely formalist aspect of the artist’s work: thanks to a multidisciplinary approach and research in the archives of the French police, the curators create a compelling journey through the life and work of Pablo Picasso, with unpublished documents and works never seen before in Italy.

The exhibition unfolds in chronological order, from 1900 to 1973, and the selected works bear witness to Picasso’s troubled condition as an exile and foreigner in France, an experience that radically influenced his artistic practice. In the painting “Reading the Letter” (1921), for example, Picasso depicts himself next to a friend, who could be the poet Guillaume Apollinaire or the poet Max Jacob, or Georges Braque: but what emerges is the importance that the artist – precisely because of the fragility of his condition as a foreigner – attributes to the bonds and friendships he has built over the years. Among the more than forty works exhibited for the first time in Italy – including paintings, drawings, sculptures -, a small gouache “Group of Women” from 1901: Picasso worked a lot in his first months in Paris, executing sixty-four works in record time that place us in front of disconcerting characters, portrayed with violent colors, with large touches of red that stand out like wounds. They are the common people of Paris observed in the slums of the city, in the cafes and streets of Montmartre, together with the welcoming group of Catalans of which Picasso is now also a part. “Looked at with suspicion as a foreigner, a man of the left, an avant-garde artist, Picasso maneuvers with skill and political acumen in a country that rests on two great institutions: the police des étrangers and the Académie des beaux-arts, which obsessively protect the ‘purity of the nation’ and ‘French good taste’ – says the curator -. In my research, the image of a vulnerable and precarious Picasso constantly appears, because he knew he could be expelled at any time. However, he knew how to navigate as a great strategist against widespread xenophobia”. At Palazzo Te in Mantua, the exhibition “Picasso at Palazzo Te. Poetry and salvation” is already open until January 6, 2025, in dialogue with the frescoes of Giulio Romano, which presents about 50 works by the Master symbol of the twentieth century, including drawings, documents, sculptures and paintings, some exceptionally exhibited in Italy for the first time. Both projects are born from the collaboration with the MNNP and are curated by Annie Cohen-Solal. With the entrance ticket to the exhibition in Milan, visitors can access the exhibition in Mantua with the reduced ticket and vice versa.