Picasso lo straniero

From February 27 to June 29, 2025, the Museo del Corso – Polo Museale presents the third Italian leg of the exhibition Picasso lo Straniero, curated by Annie Cohen-Solal. Following its successful debut at Palazzo Reale in Milan and Palazzo Te in Mantua, this exhibition offers a new perspective on one of the most influential artists of the 20th century. Organized by Fondazione Roma with Marsilio Arte, it brings together over 100 works of art, including paintings, sculptures, drawings, ceramics, and photographs, thanks to the collaboration with the Musée national Picasso-Paris (MNPP), its principal lender, as well as the Palais de la Porte Dorée with the Musée national de l’histoire de l’immigration, Museu Picasso Barcelona, Musée Picasso Antibes, Musée Magnelli – Musée de la céramique in Vallauris, and important historical private European collections. The original idea of the project was conceived by Annie Cohen-Solal, the exhibition’s curator, with an intervention by Johan Popelard from the Musée National Picasso-Paris.

Picasso lo straniero presents over 100 works by the artist, along with documents, photographs, letters, and videos: a project that is enriched – for the second Italian stop after Palazzo Reale in Milan and Palazzo Te in Mantua – by a selection of works chosen exclusively for the Museo del Corso – Polo Museale’s exhibition path by the curator.

“Picasso lo straniero is the major temporary exhibition hosted by Museo del Corso – Polo Museale following its inauguration with the painting by Chagall, The White Crucifixion. It is a highly prestigious exhibition with international resonance, representing a significant recognition that our museum space has earned in a very short time”, comments Franco Parasassi, President of Fondazione Roma. “In the few months since the inauguration, in fact, Museo del Corso – Polo Museale has established itself as one of the main cultural spaces in the capital, not only with exhibitions like Chagall and now Picasso at Palazzo Cipolla but also with the Permanent Collection and the Historical Archive of Palazzo Sciarra Colonna, which have received public acclaim beyond expectations. All of this makes us deeply proud and shows that we are working in the right direction, also to pursue the goal that Fondazione Roma has set for itself: to be a promoter of culture and beauty in an open, inclusive space rich in history, always serving the community,” concludes the President.

Pablo Picasso, born in 1881 in Málaga, Spain, settled in Paris permanently in 1904. Even though France would host him until his death and his fame grew beyond national borders, the artist never obtained French citizenship: the exhibition traces Picasso’s aesthetic and political trajectory, illustrating how the artist built his identity while living in the difficult condition of an immigrant.

“Everything has been written about Picasso, you might say. No other artist has stirred as many debates, controversies, and passions. But how many know what obstacles the young genius had to face when he first arrived in Paris in 1900, not knowing a word of French? And how did he manage to navigate the modern metropolis, the sprawling city gripped by intense social tensions? Why, in 1914, were seven hundred of his best Cubist paintings confiscated and later sold at auction? Why, in 1940, when he was already beloved and respected worldwide, was his request for naturalization in France rejected? These questions, along with many others that had remained unanswered until now, are addressed and resolved for the first time in this exhibition. Picasso lo straniero at Museo del Corso – Polo Museale is the fifth edition of the exhibition that, over the past four years, has traveled from Paris (Palais de la Porte Dorée) to New York (Gagosian Gallery), from Mantua (Palazzo Te) to Milan (Palazzo Reale). The Adolescent will bring the message of Picasso lo straniero to Rome: with eyes that capture the gaze, a laurel wreath adorning his brow, the elegance of the oval face, well-drawn lips, and a wide ruffled collar, he appears as though he stepped out of a painting by Velázquez (1599-1660). However, his enormous, disproportionate hands and feet, deformed nose, asymmetric eyes, raven-black, bristling, rebellious hair, and vivid colors belong to the world of Picasso’s Cubism (1907-1914), the artist who could do anything. The painting was created on August 2, 1969, in the south of France by an eighty-eight-year-old man, four years before his death, as he turned toward his past”, writes Annie Cohen-Solal, curator and author of Picasso the Foreigner (Prix Femina Essai, 2021), an award-winning book published worldwide and in Italy by Marsilio Editori.

The exhibition was born directly from the research illustrated in the volume, which began in 2015 and lasted more than seven years, telling the story of the “Picasso paradox”: “In France, Pablo Picasso is a national myth,” continues the curator. “With the opening of the Musée National Picasso-Paris in the heart of Paris in 1985, his works became an integral part of the national heritage. However, it was not always this way. Few know that the painter was never granted French citizenship and, in 1901, was even labeled by the police as an “anarchist under surveillance”. Yet, despite the difficulties, humiliations, rejections, and setbacks Picasso faced upon arriving in a xenophobic France freshly emerged from the Dreyfus Affair, the artist pressed on, stubbornly building his work. This is the “Picasso paradox” that surrounds the name of this legendary artist. For forty-five years, he had numerous problems with French institutions. By closely examining the period before his rise to fame, every trace found in the archives has been analyzed to bring to light the true beginnings of a young artist searching for an open world to anchor his path. In front of an over-centralized country, with sometimes outdated institutions and weary from its own tensions, Picasso found remarkable strategies to circumvent these obstacles, demonstrating an extraordinary political intelligence and inventing innovative solutions in the social gaps to turn the stigmas attributed to him – foreigner, anarchist, avant-garde artist – to his advantage.”

The chronological path of the exhibition, enriched by loans from important museums and private collections, is thus an opportunity to further explore how the artist, master of 20th-century art, established himself as a foreigner in France and imposed his aesthetic revolutions through the curator’s radically contemporary perspective.

Picasso lo straniero, which will close on June 29, 2025, has been made possible with the support of BPER Banca, the sponsor.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalog published by Marsilio Arte, which opens with an introductory section featuring institutional contributions; a text by the curator on Picasso and Rome in the spring of 1917; and an original in-depth study on Picasso and ceramics as both a challenge and an art form. The catalog follows the chronological path of the exhibition sections, from the portrait of the artist as a young man between 1895 and 1900 to his death in the south of France in 1973.