On June 18, 2010 a large-scale exhibition entitled Picasso. From the collection of the National Picasso Museum, Paris opened in staterooms of the Winter Palace (the Eastern Gallery, the Field Marshal's Room, the Armorial Hall, the Picket Room, halls of Court Gallery on the third floor of the Winter Palace). The exhibition is held under auspices of the President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Medvedev and the President of the French Republic Nicolas Sarkozy, organized by the State Hermitage in association with the National Picasso Museum, Paris, with the support of the Russian Federation Ministry of Culture and the French Ministry of Culture and Communication in the framework of the Year of France in Russia and the Year of Russia in France 2010 program and carries on traditions of partnership and cooperation in the field of culture and arts in both countries. The exhibition in the State Hermitage is held with the aid of V. Potanin's Welfare Fund.

The exposition is arranged chronically and allows tracing the evolution of all works of 20th-century great artist Pablo Picasso literally year upon year beginning from his early works and ending with philosophical works in the closing stages oh his life. Wide chronological review amalgamating painting, sculpture, graphic art and photography opens with the Death of Casagemas, a small symbolical painting of 1901 depicting the closest Picasso’s friend, and ends with the Young Painter created in 1972 several months before his death. Covering all periods of diverse activity and all areas where the artist’s plastic ingenuity showed, the exhibition of the Paris collection presents wealth and complexity of master’s career.

The exposition includes section prepared specially for Russia. It reflects amazing interweaving of biographical facts and creative work. In 1918 Picasso married ballerina with Russian Ballets troupe Olga Khokhlova whom he had met in Rome while working on the ballet Parade. Images of Olga and their son Paulo, who was born in 1921, appear in Picasso’s works at all times between 1917 and 1923. This period is presented with complex of 50 graphic works as well as photos primarily from personal files of Picasso. Particularly it includes sketches for performances of Sergey Dyagilev’s Russian Ballets Parade (1917), Tricorn (1919), Pulcinella (1920), Cuadro Flamenco (1921) created in cooperation with Russian great choreographer Leonid Myasin, avan-grade composers Eric Satie, Igor Stravinsky, Manuel de Falla and writers Guillaume Apollinaire and Jean Cocteau. Concerning sketches and scenery models, curtains or costumes these ballets appear at interface of space, time and motion as a laboratory for creating all-embracing art work falling beyond traditional relationships between music, dance and scenery.

The National Picasso Museum, the largest monographic museum dedicated to works of Picasso, was founded in 1985. It contains a large number of works granted to the state by artist’s heirs in 1979. They generously gave the state the right for "initial selection" from among 70,000 works kept in his different studios to amass an overall collection that reflects his creative work to the full. Than year the heirs passed collection of art works of Iberia, Africa and Oceania from artist’s personal collection. With a view to keeping this collection as a whole, Picasso's heirs also entrusted to the museum about 200,000 pieces from his personal files, provided inquiring into his creative work. Upon Jacquiline Picasso's death in 1986, her daughter generously granted to the state (1990) collection that enriched especially the section about Picasso's art in the sixties. Due to two historical passings and 20-year active buying police the museum possesses today the unique collection numbering more than 5,000 Picasso’s works that played a key role in his creative work and comprised the fullest public collection of his works. This collection is the most significant tool for both a reading of modern art history and reading of creative process of the 20th century as a whole.

Picasso Museum, since 2008 temporarily closed for renovation, prepared a touring exhibition for showing in several countries of the world.

The exposition in the State Hermitage features about 200 master's works including paintings, graphic arts and sculptures. Moreover attendance will see illustrated books, photo and video documents and sound records from personal files of Picasso as well, which enriches the exhibition and turns it into striking event of culture. The displays give entire and adequate idea of the level and composition of world-wide known collection and its masterpieces.

The exhibition is accompanied by academic illustrated catalogue, the first title in Russia dedicated to the collection from Picasso Museum that reflects full range of Picasso's experiments and searches. The catalogue includes introduction by Mikhail Piotrovsky, Director of the State Hermitage Museum, and Anne Baldassari, Director of the National Picasso Museum, Paris. The authors of articles are Albert Kostenevich, Philippe Saunier, Tom Galofo, Annabelle Teneze.

The exhibition curators are Anne Baldassari, Director of the National Picasso Museum, Paris, and Àlbert Kostenevich, senior researcher of the Department of Western European Art of the State Hermitage, Doctor of Sciences in Art.

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At the press-conference

Mikhail Piotrovsky, Director of the State Hermitage Museum

Nicolas Chibaeff, General Coordinator of the Year of Russia in France and the Year of France in Russia from the French side

Àlbert Kostenevich, curator of the exhibition

Sergey Naryshkin, Head of the National Organizing Committee for the Year of Russia in France and the Year of France in Russia, Head of the Presidential Administration

Anne Baldassari, Director of the National Picasso Museum, Paris

Frédéric Mitterrand, Minister of Culture and Communication of France

At the exhibition

Curator of the exhibition Àlbert Kostenevich answers questions

Catalogue of the exhibition

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