Organized with the collaboration of the Picasso museum in Paris and the one in Malaga, the exhibition “Picasso 1969-1972” will be open to the public until July 2, and in it you can see 37 canvases and four works on paper made during the last years of his life, which he spent at Mougins, near Antibes.
“Bust of a man with a hat”, “Flute player and a naked woman” or “Bullfighter”; are some of the large-format works from that period.
In these last years, “far from the twilight announced by his detractors, Picasso managed to recapitulate his entire life as an artist and a man with great creative profusion”, explains Jean-Louis Andral, curator of the exhibition, whose subtitle is “the end of a beginning”.
“When Picasso exhibited for the last time in Avignon (south of France) in 1970 and then in 1973, it seemed to a part of the critics that he had lost his abilities and that it was the beginning of the end. I wanted to invert that formula to say what That moment opened up new horizons in his painting, which inspired other artists like (Jean-Michel) Basquiat,” Andral, who also runs this museum in Antibes, on the Côte d’Azur, told AFP.
The curator recalls some confidences from the artist in 1973, collected in the book “Voyage en Picasso” by Hélène Parmelin, in which he said that “perhaps I had never been as much a painter as in my latest works”.
Picasso was a tireless artist and did not stop creating until November 12, 1972, a few months before his death at the age of 91.
The Picasso museum in Antibes is located in the Grimaldi castle, with privileged views of the sea, and has a permanent collection of 23 paintings and 44 drawings by the Spanish artist.
From Antibes to Malaga (city of birth), passing through Paris or Barcelona, the 50th anniversary of Picasso’s death represents a good opportunity to revisit his work and his life.
For example, the Brooklyn Museum in New York will open an exhibition dedicated to his controversial relationship with women in June.