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Picasso and the Masters exhibition at the Grand Palais

It’s going to be the crowd-puller of the season: the Picasso Museum, the Musée d’Orsay and the Louvre are all clubbing together to present 210 paintings from both public and private collections from around the world. A huge event!

Le Matador, Pablo Picasso, Musée Picasso, Paris. © Succession Picasso 2008


The idea is to show how the new artistic ground broken by Picasso was at least partly thank to the influence of his peers and forefathers.

His paintings will be counterbalanced by those of many other famous artists such as Greco, Vélasquez, Goya, Zurbarán, Ribera, Melendez, Poussin, Le Nain, Dubois, Chardin, David, Ingres, Delacroix, Manet, Courbet, Lautrec, Degas, Puvis de Chavannes, Cézanne, Renoir, Gauguin, Douanier Rousseau, Titien, Cranach, Rembrandt, Van Gogh.

These, and all manner of other European artists returned the favour: one painter’s work became the inspiration for another’s, and then that work went on to inspire someone else. A sort of Facebook if you like, where each person’s actions are relayed to others and used ton inspire some other action.

Pablo Picasso, Vallauris 1954, Arnold Newman, Musée Picasso, archives Picasso, APPH 2490. © Photo Béatrice Hatala © Arnold Newman Estate/Getty Images © Succession Picasso, 2008

Rather than just cite, copy and paraphrase other artists, Picasso initiated a new system which leans more towards perverse duplication, irony and pastiche.

As well as the works shown at the Grand Palais, two thematic collections of Picasso’s work will be shown elswhere; one at the Louvre, based on the Femmes d’Alger by Delacroix, the other at the Musée d’Orsay, around Manet’s Déjeuner sur l’herbe.

Here’s all the essential information for the Picasso et les maîtres exhibition at the Grand Palais

When: 8th October 2008 – 2nd February 2009
Where: Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, 3 avenue du Général Eisenhower, Paris 8th arrondissement, métro Champs-Élysées-Clemenceau (lines 1 & 13). Bus n°s 28, 32, 42, 49, 72, 73, 80, 83 & 93
Opening hours: Open every day except Tuesday from 10am – 10pm (8pm Thursdays). Special opening hours during school holidays: 25th October – 5th November, 7th – 10th November and from 20th December – 4th January, open from 9am to 11pm including Tuesdays. Early closing (6pm) on 9th October and 24th & 31st December
Admission: adults 12 euros, concession 8 euros, free for under-13s
Official site with more info: here


Bigger map here