The Picasso Museum in Antibes, in the south-east of France, launched on Saturday the commemorations of the 50th anniversary of the painter’s death, on April 8, 1973. He inaugurated an exhibition devoted to the very last years of his life.
Mounted with the help of the Picasso National Museum in Paris, the Antibes exhibition “Picasso 1969-1972” presents until July 2 37 canvases and four works on paper executed by the artist during those years in Mougins, not far from Antibes, where he lived since 1961 and where he breathed his last.
“Bust of a man with a hat”, “Flute player and naked woman”, “Torero”… the large format works have been loaned by the Picasso museums in Paris and Malaga, private galleries and the artist’s family .
They testify to a period when, far from the “twilight announced by his detractors, Picasso recapitulated his whole life as an artist and as a man in a creative proliferation,” notes in the catalog the curator of the exhibition, Jean-Louis Andral. , who captioned the exhibition “the end of the beginning”.
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“When Picasso exhibited for the last time in Avignon in 1970 and then in 1973, some of the critics found that he had lost his means and that it was the beginning of the end. I wanted to reverse the formula to to say that on the contrary, it was a moment which opened up new horizons for painting, which seduced painters like (Jean-Michel) Basquiat”, specified to AFP Mr. Andral, also director of the Picasso museum in ‘Antibes.
Quoting the work “Voyage en Picasso” by Hélène Parmelin, he notes this confidence of the Spanish artist explaining in 1973 that “perhaps he had never been ‘as painter’ as in the last paintings”. He never stopped creating until his last work session on November 12, 1972, a few weeks before his death at the age of 91.
Housed in the Château Grimaldi, facing the sea, the Picasso Museum in Antibes permanently presents 23 paintings and 44 drawings by Picasso left on deposit by the artist in 1946 following a two-month stay during which he was able to use part of the museum as a workshop.
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The collection has been enriched over the years and donations, in particular ceramics made in the post-war years in the neighboring town of Vallauris.
From Antibes to Malaga, the painter’s birthplace, via Paris, the fiftieth anniversary of his death promises many highlights to rediscover his work and in particular the opportunity to question his relationship to women with in particular an exhibition Picasso and feminism at the Brooklyn Museum in New York in June.
This article has been published automatically. Sources: ats / afp