The Picasso Century

The Picasso Century exhibition charts the extraordinary career of Pablo Picasso in dialogue with the many artists, poets and intellectuals with whom he intercepted and interacted throughout the 20th century, including Guillaume Apollinaire, Georges Braque, Salvador Dalí, Alberto Giacometti, Françoise Gilot, Valentine Hugo, Marie Laurencin, Dora Maar, André Masson, Henri Matisse, Dorothea Tanning and Gertrude Stein.

The exhibition features over 80 works by Picasso and over 100 works by more than 60 of his contemporaries, drawn from French national collections, as well as the NGV Collection. Audiences will also have the opportunity to discover a rich selection of works by artists rarely exhibited in Australia, including Natalia Goncharova, Julio González, Wifredo Lam, Suzanne Valadon and Maria Helena Vieira da Silva.

Curated by noted scholar of 20th-century painting Didier Ottinger, Deputy Director of the Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris, The Picasso Century examines the diverse influences, encounters and collaborative relationships that steered Picasso through many distinct artistic periods, such as his Blue Period, Cubism and Surrealism, and draws lines between Picasso’s famous creations and the world around him.

By exploring Picasso’s career through his personal, artistic and intellectual engagement with his peers, the exhibition provides a unique insight into the artistic legacy of one of the 20th century’s most influential and celebrated artists, and the community of artists from which he emerged.

Images: Installation view of The Picasso Century on display from 10 June-9 October 2022 at NGVInternational, Melbourne. Photo: Tom Ross