EXHIBITION Guide
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“I paint the way some people write an
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are the pages from my diary.”
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—Pablo Picasso (1881–1973)
Portrait of artist Pablo Picasso, Vallauris,
France, 1954. Photograph by © Arnold
Newman/Getty Images © Picasso Estate
SODRAC (2012).
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Art was Picasso’s destiny. He could draw before he could talk,
painted like an old master while still a teenager, and by age
30 he had taken Paris – the centre of the art world – by storm.
Ceaselessly prolific, he devoured influences and created
innovation after innovation, inventing new styles that forever
changed the course of modern art. He was a genius and he
knew it. Intense and passionate, he bucked authority at every
turn, determined to carve out his own path to becoming the
world’s greatest artist. Ultimately, every Picasso artwork
is about Picasso – the works reveal his unique vision of the
world and embody his profound responses to it. They lay bare
the beauty and anxieties of his time, the horrors of war, as
well as his personal passions, desires and fears.
Galleria Italia
EXHIBITION EXIT
Dundas Street West
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From Spain to Paris
1900–1905
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Ancient, African and Oceanic Inspirations
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Norma Ridley
Cubism, Collage and Constructions
Members’ Lounge
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Classicism, Marriage and Family
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Surreal Anxiety and Desire
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War Paintings
1936–1951
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The Joy of Life and Last Years
1950–1972
Grange Park
The Grange
(Contemporary Tower
1909–1915
elevator access)
1914–1924
Joey & Toby Tanenbaum
Sculpture Atrium
1924–1934
Walker Court
(Access to
N stated):
All images (unless otherwise
Learning Centre)
Musée National Picasso, Paris
© Picasso Estate SODRAC (2012)
© Paris, RMN
Maxine Granovsky
Photo credits by room number: 1 Rights Reserved; 2, 5 René-Gabriel Ojeda; 3 Béatrice
4, 6, 7, 8 Jean-Gilles Berizzi.
& Ira GluskinHatala;
Hall
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COVER: Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881–1973), Portrait de Dora Maar (Portrait of Dora Maar), 1937.
Oil on canvas, 92 x 65 cm.
Membership
Pablo Picasso gift-in-lieu, 1979, MP 158.
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Organized by the Musée
W Picasso, Paris, and the Art Gallery of Ontario
E National
1906–1909
This exhibition offers a rare perspective on the life and work
of this iconic artist: his own. It features works from Picasso’s
private collection, now in the holdings of the Musée National
Picasso in Paris. Over a career of more than seventy years,
these are the works he kept with the intent of shaping his
own artistic legacy.
Picasso’s Early Life and Art
Pablo Picasso was born in Málaga, in
southern Spain, on October 25, 1881,
the eldest of three children. His first
words were “piz, piz”, a shortening of
lápiz, the Spanish word for “pencil”.
His father was a painter and art
teacher who recognized his son as
an artistic prodigy and began Pablo’s
formal artistic training when he was
only seven years old. The family lived
in La Coruña from 1891 to 1895, then
moved to Barcelona, where his father
taught painting and Pablo studied art.
In 1899 an 18-year-old Pablo Picasso
rejected his traditional art studies,
joining a circle of young avant-garde
artists centred around the Barcelona
café named Els Quatre Gats (The Four
Cats).
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From Spain to Paris
Making Way: Ancient, African
and Oceanic Inspirations
1900–1905
1906–1909
La Célestine (La Femme à la taie)
Celestina (The Woman with One Eye)
1904
oil on canvas, 74.5 x 58.5 cm, Fredrik Roos
gift, 1989, MP 1989–5.
“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to
remain an artist when he grows up.”
“I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order
that I may learn how to do it.”
Picasso was 19 years old when he first visited Paris in 1900
to attend the Exposition Universelle (World’s Fair). His huge
traditional painting Last Moments was presented there as
part of the official Spanish section of the Fair. Shocked and
inspired by seeing the range of French avant-garde painting
(Impressionism, Post-Impressionism and Symbolism) all at
once, he began experimenting with different styles.
In 1906 Picasso began intensive experimentations in drawing
and painting after seeing ancient Iberian sculptures as well
as African and Oceanic artworks for the first time. He made
radical shifts in his style by bringing a sculptural look and
feel to painting, introducing mask-like, chiselled features
and flattened angular bodies.
Over the next few years, Picasso moved restlessly between
Barcelona and Paris. By the spring of 1904, he finally scraped
together enough money to settle in the French capital. He
moved into a dilapidated studio in bohemian Montmartre
among a circle of friends including Spanish artists, poets
Max Jacob and Guillaume Apollinaire, and other colourful
characters.
The Blue and Rose Periods
During these phases of his career, Picasso painted distinct subjects
in specific colour palettes. His Blue Period (1901–1904) featured
the disenfranchised of modern life – prostitutes, the poor and the
homeless – in endless shades of grey and blue. By 1904 Picasso’s
gloomy outlook had brightened. Inspired by the circus and the
theatre, he began to create works in pinks and warm earthly
browns: his Rose Period.
This rebellious departure from traditional European
painting culminated in the creation of his early masterpiece,
Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907), now in the Museum of
Modern Art in New York. The preparatory studies for this
work, on display in this room, reveal how Picasso wrestled
with new ways to represent the human body. Picasso’s
biographer John Richardson describes Les Demoiselles as
a turning point not merely for Picasso, but for all of modern
art. This new style of painting cleared the way for Cubism and
“enabled people to perceive things with new eyes, new minds,
new awareness.”
Trois Figures sous un arbre
Three Figures beneath a Tree
1907–08
oil on canvas, 99 x 99 cm, William
McCarthy-Cooper gift, 1986, MP 1986–2.
Violon
Violin
1915
construction: cut folded and painted sheet
metal, wire, 100 x 63.7 x 18 cm, Pablo
Picasso gift-in-lieu, 1979, MP 255.
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Cubism, Collage and Constructions
Classicism, Marriage and Family
1909–1915
1914–1924
“Painting is a dramatic action in the course of which
reality finds itself split apart.”
“If Cubism is an art of transition, I am sure that the
only thing that will come out of it is another form of
Cubism.”
By 1909, much of Picasso’s work was being purchased by
vanguard buyers and top art dealers. His meteoric rise to fame
and fortune was underway. No longer impoverished, he moved
into a new studio and left his bohemian lifestyle behind.
World War I (1914–1918) sent many Parisian artists to the
front. Yet as a foreign national, Picasso continued to work
largely undisturbed. He travelled to Italy and the south of
France for the first time. Motivated by his experiences of
art in ancient Rome and Pompeii, and perhaps moved by the
postwar desire for stability and order, Picasso returned to
the classics.
Picasso began working with French artist Georges Braque
(1882–1963) at this time. Together they produced perhaps
the most significant innovation in modern painting: Cubism.
Their experiments in painting, collage and sculpture
revolutionized European art, as they created works unlike
anything that had come before. Braque once described
he and Picasso as “two mountaineers roped together,”
emphasizing their collaboration and the pioneering spirit
of their artistic endeavours. Their collaboration came to an
end with the outbreak of World War I, as Braque, like many
others, left for the front.
What exactly is Cubism?
Cubism combines many possible views of a three-dimensional object
into one image. To achieve these multiple viewpoints, subjects
are broken up, analyzed and reassembled in an abstracted form.
Cubism opened up infinite possibilities for painting, including pure
abstraction. Characterized by geometric forms (often squares or
“cubes”), this style emphasizes the flatness of the painting rather
than trying to create an illusion of depth.
Some followers, who had embraced Cubism, considered
this a conservative retreat. The bulky inflated figures in
Picasso’s 1920s paintings seemed the exact opposite of the
radical flattened planes and abstractions of his Cubist works.
But Picasso wanted to be neither part of a crowd nor tied
to a single movement. His new domestic life in an upscale
bourgeois apartment also inspired tender images of his wife
Olga Khokhlova and playful portraits of their child, Paulo.
Did you know?
Picasso designed ballet costumes and sets. His writer friend Jean
Cocteau introduced him to Serge Diaghilev of the Ballets Russes.
In early 1917 Diaghilev invited Picasso to travel to Italy and design
the sets and costumes for a new ballet titled Parade, created by
Jean Cocteau with music by Erik Satie. Picasso fell in love with one
of the ballerinas, Olga Khokhlova, and married her the next year.
Picasso never lost his enthusiasm for the theatre; between 1917
and 1962 he created designs for nine ballets.
Deux femmes courant sur la plage
(La Course)
Two Women Running on the Beach
(The Race)
1922
gouache on plywood, 32.5 x 41.1 cm, Pablo
Picasso gift-in-lieu, 1979, MP 78.
Pottery shop assistant and Picasso’s
second wife. He was enamored by
her classical beauty and saw her as
a reincarnation of a woman painted
by French master Eugène Delacroix,
with whom Picasso was obsessed.
With Picasso 1953–1973
Jacqueline Roque (1926–1986)
In honour of his 90th birthday, the Louvre installs
8 of his paintings in its Grande Galerie
Dies April 8 in Mougins, France
1971
1973
Picasso and Man exhibition at the AGO is said
to be the first ever blockbuster exhibition
Marries Jacqueline Roque
Moves to the south of France permanently
1955
1961
1964
Birth of daughter Paloma (to Françoise)
1949
Birth of son Claude (to Françoise)
Joins French Communist Party
Nazis invade Paris. Picasso stays in Paris
throughout the occupation
An artist herself, she and Picasso fell
in love in Nazi-occupied Paris. They
had two children together. The only
woman to ever leave Picasso, she
published a memoir in 1964, Life with
Picasso. Still paints and exhibits today.
1944
1940
opens at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
It travels to eight other American cities
1947
With Picasso 1943–1953
1936–1973
SURREALIST INTERACTIONS
1925–1935
CLASSICISM AND THE THEATRE
1916–1924
CUBISM
1909–1914
ROSE PERIOD
1905–1906
BLUE PERIOD
1901–1904
WAR YEARS AND LATER WORK
1936–1939 Spanish Civil War
1937 Paints his anti-war masterpiece Guernica
1939–1945 World War II
1939 Major exhibition Picasso: Forty Years of his Art
Birth of daughter Maya (to Marie-Thérèse)
Begins secret affair with
Marie-Thérèse Walter
1927
1935
Birth of son Paulo (to Olga)
1921
1918
Marries Olga Khokhlova and moves
into an upscale Parisian neighborhood
World War I
Exhibits eight works at the International
Exhibition of Modern Art at the Armory Show,
New York. Many artists living in New York
see his work for the first time
1913
1914–1918
Produces first Cubist sculpture,
Head of a Woman (Fernande), 1909
Paints groundbreaking
Les Demoiselles d’Avignon
Meets Georges Braque,
co-inventor of Cubism
Settles in Paris
Death of friend Carlos Casagemas
1909
1901
1904
1907
Moves to Barcelona with his family
1895
Françoise Gilot (born 1921)
An intense and beautiful Surrealist
photographer and writer. She and
Picasso shared left-wing political
values. Famously photographed the
creation of Picasso’s Guernica (1937).
With Picasso 1935–1944
Dora Maar (1907–1997)
Their passionate relationship fuelled
paintings charged with explicit
eroticism. Often portrayed in soft
pastel colours – look for her signature
blond hair.
With Picasso from 1927–1936
Marie-Thérèse Walter
(1909–1977)
Ukrainian-Russian ballerina and
Picasso’s first wife. They met when
Picasso was designing costumes and
sets for the Ballets Russes in Rome.
With Picasso 1917–1935; separated
in 1935, married until 1954
Olga Khokhlova (1891–1954)
Famed artist’s model and Picasso’s
first Parisian relationship. Appears
in many of Picasso’s Rose Period
works, and modelled for Picasso’s
first Cubist sculpture.
With Picasso from 1904–1912
Fernande Olivier (1881–1966)
TOP TO BOTTOM: Portrait of Fernande, 1909. Photo: Pablo Picasso. Archives Picasso. | Olga in Picasso’s
Montrouge studio, spring 1918. Photo: Pablo Picasso [and Etienne Deletang]. Archives Picasso. | Marie-Thérèse
Walter, Juan-les-Pins, July 27, 1932, photographed by Pablo Picasso. © Archives Maya Widmaier Picasso, 2012.
| Dora Maar smoking a cigarette, 1946. Photo: IZIS (Israel Bidermanas). Archives Picasso. | Françoise Gilot,
Vallauris, around 1952 (Photo by Robert Doisneau/Gamma-Rapho/Getty Images). © Getty Images. | Jacqueline
Roque and Pablo Picasso in Villa La Californie, Cannes, 1957. Photo: Pablo Picasso. Archives Picasso.
TIMELINE
Born Pablo Ruiz Picasso on
October 25 in Málaga, Spain
1881
Picasso considered a blank page to be a personal challenge. Take a pencil and let your hand move
Surreal Anxiety and Desire
1924–1934
“Art is never chaste.”
oil on canvas, 130 x 195 cm, Pablo Picasso
gift-in-lieu, 1979, MP 131.
The most significant new stimulus to
Picasso’s imagery was his relationship
with the blonde curvy beauty MarieThérèse Walter. Picasso’s infatuation
with his young mistress, who was just
seventeen when they met in 1927,
dominated his drawings, sculptures
and paintings for a ten-year period.
He was particularly drawn to the Surrealists’ emphasis on
dreams, the subconscious mind and metamorphosis. In the
early 1930s Picasso produced a number of spare landscapes
featuring clusters of wildly dislocated body parts in erotic
encounters. Their stone-like (almost mollusk-like) forms
veered ever closer to Surrealism. Out to prove he was as great
a sculptor as he was a painter, he created a series of enormous
bronze heads, rendering their suggestive shapes in 3-D.
it, fold it, rip it, twist it, crumple it, write on it… A single piece of paper offers a million opportunities!
Figures au bord de la mer
Figures on the Seashore
1931
The sense of well-being that infused Picasso’s early images
of family life all but disappeared in the last half of the 1920s.
Seeking new ways of expressing his anxieties about tensions at home, Picasso was influenced by the new Surrealist
movement led by André Breton. Though ambivalent towards
all movements, Picasso exhibited with the Surrealists and
contributed to their publications.
randmoly across the paper. Don’t think, just start drawing and see what happens. Don’t feel like drawing? Then use this page to create something else: cut
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War Paintings: Of Love and War
War Paintings: World War II
to Korean War
1936–1939
1940–1951
La femme qui pleure
The Weeping Woman
1937
oil on canvas, 55.3 x 46.3 cm, Pablo Picasso
gift-in-lieu, 1979, MP 165.
In contrast to the docile MarieThérèse, the intense and passionate
Dora Maar challenged Picasso, which
he found invigorating. She inspired a
new, keyed-up visual style of acidic
colors and sharp angles. Picasso used
her tear-streaked face as a symbol
of tragedy and grief in anguished
images responding to the Spanish Civil
War (1936–1939) and World War II
(1939–1945).
“Painting is not made to decorate rooms. It is an
instrument of war against brutality and darkness.”
“I stand for life against death and peace
against war.”
The 1930s was a turbulent decade for Picasso. His marriage
to Olga broke down when his lover Marie-Thérèse became
pregnant. In 1935, his daughter Maya was born and he began
a relationship with the Surrealist photographer and writer
Dora Maar. For the only time in his career, he ceased painting
for some nine months between 1935 and 1936, instead writing
poetry in the manner of Surrealist “automatic writing.”
In 1940 the Nazis invaded Paris. Picasso continued to work
in his Paris studio during the occupation, albeit under the
watchful eye of German authorities. Symbols of death,
particularly the skull, pervaded Picasso’s work during
this time, capturing the tense and uncertain atmosphere.
Although skulls are common symbols of human mortality
in art history, the bare honesty of Picasso’s painting and
sculptures transforms them into poignant emblems of the
death and destruction of war.
Dora Maar’s involvement in left-wing political activities
left its mark on Picasso. The outbreak of the Spanish Civil
War in 1936 greatly disturbed the artist, and his enormous
painting Guernica expressed his outrage over the bombing
of the Basque village by right-wing nationalists in 1937. Maar
photographed Picasso many times in his home and studio.
You can see her famous documentation of the evolution of
Guernica in this room.
Many of Picasso’s earlier works depict the bull in conflict with
a horse or matador, but during this time he shows the bull alone,
both as a symbol of strength and vulnerability. Man with Sheep
from 1943, one of Picasso’s most ambitious bronze sculptures,
is also a powerful sign of human vitality and fragility.
Picasso the Great
Picasso solidified his status as one of the world’s greatest living
artists during this period. Major retrospectives of his work were held
in 1939 in New York and in 1944 at the first Salon d’Automne in Paris
following the city’s liberation. Around this time he also met the young
artist Françoise Gilot, who later penned a memoir on her life with
Picasso. Together they had two children: Claude (born 1947) and
Paloma (born 1949).
Massacre en Corée
Massacre in Korea
1951
oil on plywood, 110 x 210 cm, Pablo Picasso
gift-in-lieu, 1979, MP 203 (detail above).
Apart from Guernica, Picasso painted
few explicitly anti-war paintings.
In this room, you can see one other
major example, Massacre in Korea
(1951), a protest against the US
military intervening in the Korean War
(1950–1953) and the killing of millions
of civilians.
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Galleria Italia
EXHIBITION EXIT
THE JOY OF LIFE
Follow the Trail!
1950–1972
Can’t get enough of Picasso? Then follow our Picasso Trail, where you’ll see
specially selected works from the AGO’s collection. Look for the “P” symbol
on panels and labels.
Dundas Street West
Grange Park
Norma Ridley
Members’ Lounge
“When I paint I feel that all artists of the past are
behind me.”
(Contemporary Tower
elevator access)
The Grange
LEVEL 1
Joey & Toby Tanenbaum
Sculpture Atrium
Le Baiser
The Kiss
1969
oil on canvas, 97 x 130 cm, Pablo Picasso
gift-in-lieu, 1979, MP 220.
In 1953 Picasso met and fell in love
with Jacqueline Roque. She was
27 and he was 72. They moved
permanently to the south of France
in 1955 and married in 1961. Picasso
depicted Jacqueline more than any
other woman in his lifetime, creating
more than 70 portraits of her in one
year alone.
Walker Court
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(Access to
Learning Centre)
Maxine Granovsky
& Ira Gluskin Hall
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Beverley Street
During this time, Picasso reworked styles he had pioneered
in his earlier days, particularly Cubism. As was the case
throughout his career, Picasso was stimulated by paintings
of the past. Now an old master himself, he looked back to
the greats who had inspired him, creating variations of
masterpieces by Delacroix, Velázquez and Manet. It was a
way for him to pay homage, as well as to confirm his power
as a painter and secure his place in art history.
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LAST YEARS
Even in his eighties, Picasso was unceasingly productive.
The hundreds of paintings, drawings and etchings from his
final years chronicle a race against the inevitable end. It is
only recently that the significance and innovation of Picasso’s
late works have come to be appreciated, with many art
historians, critics and artists acknowledging his continuing
and insatiable creativity.
Making his Mark: Picasso Prints and Drawings
Seated Woman, 1927
Gallery 142
See six exquisite prints and drawings spanning from
Picasso’s early days as a struggling young artist through
to the final decade of his legendary career.
Gallery 128
A triple portrait of Picasso, his wife Olga and their son
Paulo.
Look Again: Picasso and Man
Gallery 141
Travel back in time to 1964 and visit Picasso and Man,
the first Picasso blockbuster at the AGO. Featuring
photographs, archival materials and, of course, artworks,
including Crouching Woman from his Blue Period and
works on paper.
Nude with Clasped Hands, 1905–1906 Pablo Picasso died on April 8, 1973. He was buried on the
grounds of the Château de Vauvenargues, outside Aix-enProvence in the south of France.
Gallery 123
A portrait of Picasso’s first true love, Fernande.
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Head of a Woman (Fernande), 1909
Gallery 129
Another sculpture cast from the same mould as the Head
of aGrange
Woman
Park(Fernande) in Picasso: Masterpieces from the
Musée National Picasso, Paris, now on view on Level 2.
The Grange (access from Level 1 only)
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Level 2
African and Oceanic Galleries
Library & Archives
Gallery 247, 249
Visit Level 2 to see examples 021
of artworks like those
that inspired Picasso.
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Ship Models
(access from Level 1 only)
019
Dr. Anne
Tanenbaum
Gallery School
020
eet
oil on canvas, 114 x 146 cm, Pablo Picasso
gift-in-lieu, 1979, MP 211.
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McCaul Street
L’atelier de la Californie
The Studio at La Californie
1956
Surrounded by the sunny environs of southern France and his
two small children, Picasso produced work in the 1950s that
reflected a more cheerful, playful outlook. His vividly coloured
paintings of interior spaces also reveal the influence of artist
friend and rival Henri Matisse (1869–1954), whom Picasso
considered his only equal.
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Learn More
For more info about the artist, the exhibition and
a full list of related programs and promotions,
visit www.ago.net/picasso
Guided Tours: Follow the Trail!
Join our Gallery Guides as they reveal the stories behind the AGO’s very own Picassos.
Tours run daily.
Adult Talks in Jackman Hall
Public $20 | Members $17 | Students $12
• The Silent Muse: The Influence of African Art on Picasso’s Early Work
Dr. Augustus Casely-Hayford: Wednesday, May 9, 7:00–8:30 pm
Family Fun
To enrich your experience, enjoy
a kids’ audio guide (free with the
purchase of an adult audio guide).
And don’t forget to visit the Family
Creativity Lounge near the exhibition.
Afterward, children can play and
create in our Hands-On Centre (open
Tues–Fri, 10–2 and Sat–Sun, 10–4).
When it’s time to eat, we offer a kids
menu in both FRANK Restaurant
and caféAGO.
Stay Fuelled
• Picasso and the Art Market
Molly Ott Ambler and Elizabeth Gorayeb: Wednesday, June 6, 7:00–8:30 pm
The AGO gratefully acknowledges the generous sponsors of Picasso: Masterpieces from the Musée
National Picasso, Paris.
Lead Sponsor
Looking at mind-blowing art can
make you hungry. Luckily the AGO
offers plenty of options to fuel your
visit. Enjoy a Spanish-inspired Prix
Fixe menu in FRANK Restaurant
(reservations recommended), coffee
and a light snack in our Espresso Bar
in the light-filled Galleria Italia, or the
relaxed, family-friendly environment
of caféAGO.
Shop ’til You Drop
After the exhibition, be sure to visit
our spectacular retail shop in Galleria
Italia or the main shop just inside the
front entrance of the Gallery. Enjoy
the atmosphere of a classic Parisian
brasserie as you browse an extensive
collection of prints, books and other
unique collectibles.
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