PICASSO’S GENIUS AT THE ROYAL PALACE OF PALERMO
THE PRESIDENT OF THE FEDERICO II FOUNDATION GAETANO GALVAGNO PRESENTED WEDNESDAY ’ DECEMBER 11 “CELEBRATING PICASSO, MASTERPIECES OF THE PABLO PICASSO KUNSTMUSEUM IN MÜNSTER”,
OPEN FROM DECEMBER 12TH, UNTIL MAY 4TH 2025
The exhibition tells –through 84 works and a video section – the essential combination between Picasso’s works and his biography. The Federico II Foundation brings to Sicily a corpus of works capable of portraying both the artist and the man: paintings, lithographs, linocuts, aquatints, etchings, ceramics, drypoints, extraordinary works on themes closest to the master.
Gaetano Galvagno, President of the ARS and the Federico II Foundation: “with this exhibition, the Federico II Foundation is at the center of important international relations with public and private museums. We have long wanted to bring one of the greatest artists of the 20th century to Sicily”.
Olivier Widmaier Picasso, President of the Kunstmuseum Pablo Picasso in Münster, as well as son of Maya Picasso and grandson of the Maestro: “it is not a generalist exhibition where you get lost, there is a subtle balance between the works. I will soon come to the Royal Palace of Palermo for a special event to talk about Pablo Picasso, the greatest artist of modernity and also a little’ the grandfather of all of us”
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It was presented on Wednesday, 11 December at Palazzo Reale in Palermo “Celebrating Picasso. Masterpieces from the Kunstmuseum Pablo Picasso in Münster”, an exhibition dedicated to one of the greatest artists of the 20th century and among the greatest of all time, Pablo Picasso. The exhibition is organized by the Fondazione Federico II, chaired by Gaetano Galvagno, thanks primarily to collaboration with the Kunstmuseum Pablo Picasso in Münster. Valuable loans also come from the Picasso Museum in Antibes, from MART (Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto), from the Galleria La Nuova Pesa in Rome, as well as from private collections. The exhibition will be open to the public from 12 December until 4 May 2025.
The exhibition recounts, through 84 works, the inseparable pairing between Picasso’s works and his biography.
Thanks to the commitment of the Fondazione Federico II and its growing international relations, an important and varied body of works arrives in Sicily, capable of narrating both the artist and the man: paintings, lithographs, linocuts, aquatints, etchings, ceramics, drypoints—extraordinary works addressing the themes closest to the Master. Of great interest is also a series of photographs representing his intimate and working life, taken by David Douglas Duncan, Picasso’s principal photographer, who in 1956 was granted full access to the artist’s studio and living spaces.
“I wake up neoclassical and go to sleep neocubist,” Picasso used to say, reiterating his devotion to a continuous search for ever-new forms, his complete freedom in choosing styles, and his astonishing mastery in the use of unconventional materials. The exhibition presents precisely the many faces and facets of the Spanish artist, with loans that illuminate the complexity of this multitalented artist, an icon of artistic genius already during his lifetime. From one work to another, a mosaic emerges that presents Picasso, artist and man, in all his mutability, but also with all his contradictions. Speaking of the profound autobiographical imprint of his art, he himself said: “The painting one paints is a kind of diary to be kept.” In the case of the Spaniard, man and work are inseparable.
The project is set in the wake of the fiftieth anniversary of the Master’s death, which occurred on 8 April 1973 in Mougins, a tribute to the “cannibal,” as he sometimes called himself. Not by chance, his muse and life companion Françoise Gilot once stated that Picasso created his works with the blood of his fellow beings.
“With this exhibition,” said the President of the Fondazione Federico II, Gaetano Galvagno, “the Foundation takes another step forward in its ambitious goal of placing Palazzo Reale in a network with the most prestigious public and private artistic institutions, pushing the development of international relations that allow exchanges of knowledge, partnerships, mutual enrichment, and high-quality co-productions. The exhibition does not aim to be a simple tribute to the Master; rather, it seeks to provide impulses that allow a critical and contemporary approach to the artist who has been elevated to the Olympus of genius.”
The exhibition also offers visitors three videos. One of these is a message, also shown during the press conference, from Olivier Widmaier Picasso, President of the Kunstmuseum Pablo Picasso in Münster, as well as son of Maya Picasso and grandson of the Master: “I am in Miami for professional reasons. I regret not being with you in Palermo to celebrate Pablo Picasso and the exhibition at Palazzo Reale,” says Olivier Widmaier Picasso in the video message. “I would like to thank the President of the Ars and of the Fondazione Federico II, Gaetano Galvagno. He was able to realize this project with a clear and ambitious vision. This exhibition in homage to Pablo Picasso aims to offer the great public of Palermo, and also visitors from all over the world, an inexhaustible presentation of my grandfather’s talent. This is not a generalist approach in which the visitor risks getting lost, but a subtle balance of the works presented. Picasso observed Italian culture, which nourished his neorealist period after Cubism and before his own Surrealism. Palermo is therefore a stop to remember him. I will soon come to visit you at Palazzo Reale to speak directly about Pablo Picasso, the greatest artist of modernity and also, in a way, the grandfather of us all.”
Also on display is a video interview with Markus Müller, Director of the Kunstmuseum Pablo Picasso in Münster and curator of the exhibition, who took part via live streaming. “In 20th-century art,” states Markus Müller, “Picasso is considered a great revolutionary and destroyer of traditions. Normally, however, his works do not arise from nothing, but are creative explorations of familiar themes and motifs from art history. In reality, the great Picasso was a master of creative recycling. Picasso described to his gallerist Kahnweiler the art of deriving something new from something old as follows: ‘Fundamentally, there are very few pictorial themes. The whole world repeats them. Venus and Cupid become the Virgin and Child and then the Mother and Child, but it is always the same theme.’”
The third video present in the exhibition is a historical documentary of great impact with original scenes of Picasso at work, kindly provided by the Mediateca di Bologna.
Present in person were also Jean Louis Andral, Director of the Picasso Museum in Antibes. Alain Tapié, Conservateur of the Museums of France, as well as Pierluigi Carofano, Professor at the University of Siena, also took part.
As mentioned, the exhibition is a continuous back-and-forth between Picasso’s life and his works, as demonstrated by the various themes offered to the visitor.
The Muses. The already mentioned link between works and biography is evident starting from Picasso’s relationship with the female figure: his lovers, his wives, and his muses constitute a synthesis between eros and creativity, forming a symbiosis within his works. With every new creative phase and every new style, a woman seems to enter his life. In the winter of 1945/46, Picasso’s passion was ignited not only for his muse Françoise Gilot, but also for the graphic technique of lithography, to which he had previously devoted himself only sporadically. In this context, his Parisian printer Fernand Mourlot spoke of Picasso’s “lithographic fever.” Several masterpieces on display testify to this creative impulse, including portraits of Françoise.
“Seated Fisherman with Cap” and the “Picasso Style.” The new love with Françoise Gilot inspired Picasso, as did the general spirit of postwar optimism. His new personal beginning coincided with a new social beginning. Immersion in a form of Mediterranean carefree spirit characterized Picasso’s stay of several months in Antibes/Juan-les-Pins, where he gave life to a brilliant creative impulse. The ancient port city of Antipolis inspired the Spaniard to reinterpret ancient mythology and its repertoire of figures. Here, Picasso created a multitude of captivating masterpieces at a rapid pace. In this creative context, on 3 November 1946 Picasso painted Seated Fisherman with Cap, a work present at Palazzo Reale in Palermo, using boat paint and a plywood panel. The depiction of this sailor with his characteristic striped shirt and cap appears ordinary, referring to a character one might encounter in the bistros around the old port of Antibes, yet despite this, the represented figure does not take on a realistic appearance. As in an articulated doll, the extremities are constructed as individual joint components of the figure and separated from one another by black contour lines. The numerous pentimenti in the area of the head are visible to the naked eye. The artist depicts the eyes, mouth, and nose in abbreviated form and models the ear as a stylized figure-eight. The combination of multiple Cubist viewpoints and Surrealist metamorphoses of form found in these and other similar works generally characterizes Picasso’s work from the late 1930s and has been defined as the “Picasso style.”
In the catalogue (208 pages published by the Fondazione Federico II) there is also an image that “captures” the behind-the-scenes of a phase of the creative process: a photograph by Michel Sima, portraying Picasso while painting Seated Fisherman with Cap at the Château Grimaldi, reveals a stage of the working process. The photo shows that the head had originally been conceived as a dialogue between a dark and a light half of the face in biomorphic forms. However, Picasso painted over the left half of the head and modified the neck and mouth. The final result is more angular and linear than the original version. The transformation of this painting is quite symptomatic of the Spaniard’s working method, who generally reduced, compressed, and purified his compositions during the creation of his works.
Paloma. The myth of Picasso is also linked to the Dove (a theme present in the works on display), which represented an important turning point in terms of art accessible to the working class. In the spring of 1949, his friend and writer Louis Aragon was looking for a suitable poster for the Congress of Intellectuals for Peace to be held in Paris. In the Spaniard’s studio, the evocative depiction of a Milanese pigeon was chosen, its plumage, stirred by the wind, effectively arranged against a monochrome black background. Aragon’s choice seems to have been dictated by the biblical tradition of depicting the dove as a symbol of peace. The lithograph, created on 9 January 1949, was posted in Paris in April of the same year and from there began its international triumphant march as a globally recognized symbol of peace, according to the iconography created by Picasso. Following the success of his first Dove of Peace, Picasso did not stop creating other doves, in variants and with ever-different refinements, for other congresses and events. In the spring of 1949, after countless successes achieved with the iconography of the dove of peace, Françoise Gilot, Picasso’s companion, after their son Claude born in 1947, gave the artist a second daughter who was named Paloma (Spanish for “dove”).
Portraits of Children. Picasso immortalized his two children with chubby cheeks, Claude and Paloma, in a black-and-white lithograph exhibited at Palazzo Reale: Paloma in a drawing with black lines on a white background, while in Claude’s case he reversed this contrast. The children’s portraits are composed of layers of lines that seem to have been applied with the fingers. The Spaniard thus chose a childlike painting technique for the representation of his own children. Particularly evocative is the portrait of his daughter Paloma with doll. Against the dark background, the individual light parts of the face of his then three-year-old daughter are effectively articulated. Picasso scratches bundles of lines and areas of the image out of the background. Paloma proudly and awkwardly presents her doll, which seems like her miniature alter ego. It is a difficult task to motivate a small child to sit like a model and remain still. According to contemporary witnesses, Picasso used the trick of making children believe that he did not want to portray them, but rather their stuffed animals or dolls. This also explains the ostentatious attitude of little Paloma.
Corrida. Another important theme in Picasso’s life and imagination, which friends and contemporaries never tired of emphasizing, is that of the bullfight. Hélène Parmelin writes in her work Picasso Says: “Bulls are in his deepest soul. Bullfighters are his cousins. The arena is his home.” For him, the bullfight was an existential metaphor for his own art. He compared his work as a painter to the scene of the corrida: “Imagine for a moment being at the center of the arena. You have your easel and your canvas; it is white and must be painted, and everyone is watching you. […] The slightest mistake and you are dead. And there isn’t even any need for a bull to do it.”
This theme emerges in the exhibition through some aquatints and linocuts by Picasso, the latter technique explored by the artist starting in 1954. One example is Small Head of a Woman Crowned with Flowers, a work on display and chosen as the key image of the exhibition. The design and printing of multicolored linocuts are based on complex processes: on the one hand, it is possible to use one printing plate for each color and then print them together in an additive process. An alternative method is the so-called elimination technique, in which individual colors are printed successively from a single printing block in a subtractive process, working progressively from the lightest tone to the darkest. In the summer of 1959, Picasso abandoned the initially preferred additive printing process in favor of the elimination technique.
Creative Process. Another aspect of his work is the numerous ceramics created after the Second World War in Vallauris, in southern France. At first he painted only molds for prefabricated vases, then he began to create his own customized productions. The choice of still life, based on decorations with fish, became increasingly consistent when he moved from Paris to the French Riviera. The expert Georges Ramié, in whose workshop the artist worked, expressed the following judgment on the Spaniard’s unorthodox working methods: “Picasso’s working methods are indefinable.” Normally, Picasso did not begin his work with a defined pictorial idea, but developed it during the creative process, a way of working that art history describes as process-based pictorial thinking.
Landscape of Vallauris. On 14 April 1958 Picasso created one of his rare landscape paintings (on display: Landscape of Vallauris, 1958, oil on canvas, private collection), depicting the villa in the hinterland of the French Riviera, in Vallauris. The Spaniard was very attached to this place, as he had created his ceramics there at the Madoura workshop starting in 1947. He had already been living for three years in the prestigious Villa La Californie above Cannes. Picasso painted this view using the wet-on-wet technique, employing the light ground of the canvas as a creative medium, which shows through in the area of the building and among the lush palm trees. While the structure and roofs of the house are drawn in a Cubist interweaving, Picasso used stylized forms for the vegetation. Thus, the stylized leaves in the foreground of the painting form a kind of fence that closes off the pictorial space at the front. As mentioned, Picasso resided in Vallauris from 1955, therefore the 1958 painting represents a nostalgic glance at the hinterland of the French Riviera and at his own past.
Picasso’s Zoo. Through his works and Duncan’s photographs, the exhibition also recounts Picasso’s passion for animals; he owned several. Picasso’s private zoo had different rules for people and for animals, and the rules for people were stricter. Many contemporaries report that his dogs could roam freely and without restrictions in the rooms of his studio, a privilege he generally denied to his human guests. Picasso’s dogs also had the freedom to urinate on his bronze sculptures in the garden. According to Picasso, this gave the bronze surface a special patina.
Photographs. A true “exhibition within the exhibition”: the photographs by David Douglas Duncan give us the different faces of Picasso the man. Some of Duncan’s photos portray Picasso as a caring father devoted to his children through play and drawing. Other photos depict him as an affectionate man in the company of his last wife Jacqueline. Still others show Picasso as an animal lover, with his dachshund Lump sitting on his knees licking his plate. These photographs illuminate the many facets of his personality, revealing an artist who is, in some respects, unprecedented.
Throughout the exhibition, music “close” to the Master is played in the background: Gymnopédie No. 1 by Alfred Eric Leslie Satie and Asturias by Isaac Manuel Francisco Albéniz.
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