Exhibition Picasso Milan 2018: “Metamorfosi” at Palazzo Reale

From October 18 2018 until February 17 2019 you can visit the Picasso Metamorphosis Exhibition at the Palazzo Reale in Piazza del Duomo. Do not miss Exhibition Picasso Milan 2018, a unique exhibition dedicated to the multifaceted and fruitful relationship that the Spanish genius has developed, throughout his extraordinary career, with myth and antiquity. It is proposed to explore from this particular perspective its intense and complex creative process.

Exhibition Picasso Milan 2018

A vast exhibition with over 350 works by the Spanish artist, presenting an extraordinary overview of works. Going to underline how his extremely innovative language has in fact solid bases resting on the cultural and iconographic link with the classical world. The Exhibition Picasso Milan 2018 Metamorphosis explores this link between the two extremes – the art of Picasso and the classical world – apparently distant yet very close, through the masterpieces of the Picasso Museum in Paris, related to works that look to the canons of classical beauty.

Picasso life

Pablo Picasso was born in Malaga, Spain and was started early in the artistic apprenticeship. At only fourteen he was admitted to the Academy of Fine Arts in Barcelona. Two years later he moved to the Madrid Academy. After returning to Barcelona, he made his first trip to Paris in 1900. He returned there several times, until he settled there permanently.

From 1901, Picasso’s style began to show some original features. The so-called “blue period” began that lasted until 1904. The name of this period derives from the fact that Picasso used to paint monochromatically, using mainly blue in all shades and shades possible. The subjects were above all poor and marginalized. Picasso preferred them to a full figure, in isolated positions, looking sad and sad.

From 1905 to the end of 1906, Picasso cleared his palette, using shades of pink that are warmer than blue. He began what, in fact, is called the “pink period“. In addition to changing the color in the paintings of this period also the subjects changed. To be depicted are characters taken from the circus, acrobats and masks of the commedia dell’arte, such as Arlecchino.

Cubist period

The cubist period took place between 1906 and 1907. At the same time, like many other artists of the time, Picasso also became interested in African sculpture, on the basis of that rediscovery that exotic primitive that had influenced a lot of European artistic culture from Gauguin. From these meetings, and from the desire for continuous experimentation that has always characterized the character of the painter, in 1907 the painting “Les demoiselles de Avignon” was born, which marked the beginning of the Cubist season of Picasso.

The Cubist phase was a period of great experimentation, in which Picasso questioned the very concept of artistic representation. The passage from analytic cubism to synthetic cubism represented a fundamental moment in his artistic evolution. The painter seemed more and more interested in the simplification of the form, to reach the pure sign that contained within itself the structure of the thing and its conceptual recognition.

The Cubist phase of Picasso lasted about ten years. In 1917, after a trip to Italy, there was a total inversion in his style. He abandoned experimentation to move on to a more traditional painting. The figures became solid and almost monumental. This return to the figurative anticipated a similar phenomenon of a few years that, from the mid-20s onwards, spread throughout Europe marking the end of the Historic Avant-gardes.

The last period

But the vitality of Picasso did not stop there. His capacity for continuous experimentation led him to approach the languages of expressionism and surrealism, especially in sculpture, which in this period saw him particularly busy. In 1937 he participated in the World Exhibition in Paris, exposing in the Spanish Pavilion the painting “Guernica“ which probably remains his most famous work and one of the most symbolic of the whole of the twentieth century. Picasso died in 1973 at the age of ninety-two.

Exhibition Picasso Milan 2018

Promoted and produced by the City of Milan – Culture, Palazzo Reale and MondoMostreSkira, the exhibition is curated by Pascale Picard, director of the Avignon Civic Museums. The project, a milan stage of the great European triennial Picasso-Méditerranée, promoted by the Picasso Museum in Paris with other international institutions, presents about 200 works including works by Picasso and ancient works of art which the great master has inspired, coming from the Musée National Picasso in Paris and other important European museums such as, among others, the Musée du Louvre in Paris, the Vatican Museums in Rome, the National Archaeological Museum in Naples, the Musée Picasso in Antibes, the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lyon , the Center Pompidou in Paris, the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris, the Museu Picasso in Barcelona.

The project is grafted into a path of study on the great artist undertaken by Palazzo Reale over the decades, a cycle of exhibitions on Picasso that made the relationship between the Spanish maestro and Milan special.

Exhibition Picasso Milan 2018 in detail

First of all the exhibition of Guernica in the Sala delle Cariatidi in 1953, an exceptional event and an authentic gift that Picasso made to the city; followed, almost half a century later, a great retrospective in September 2001, four days after the attacks on the Twin Towers, organized with the collaboration of the artist’s heirs; finally, the monographic review of 2012, which documented in a large chronological excursus the variety of techniques and means of expression that characterized the production of the Spanish artist.

With Picasso Metamorphosis instead it will be the antiquity in its different forms to decline in the mythologies reinvented by Picasso and presented in six sections with the works of the great artist combined with those of ancient art – ceramics, vases, statues, votive plaques, reliefs, idols, stele – which inspired and deeply influenced him. Exhibition Picasso Milan 2018 at Palazzo Reale.

The exhibition Picasso Metamorfosi therefore proposes to penetrate the intimate laboratory of a world artist in the light of the ancient sources that inspired the work, but also to unveil the mechanisms of a singular alchemy that places Antiquity at the heart of a decisive modernity for the art of the twentieth century.

With Picasso Metamorphosis instead it will be the antiquity in its different forms to decline in the mythologies reinvented by Picasso and presented in six sections with the works of the great artist combined with those of ancient art – ceramics, vases, statues, votive plaques, reliefs, idols, stele – which inspired and deeply influenced him. Exhibition Picasso Milan 2018 at Palazzo Reale.

Timetables

Tuesday – Wednesday – Friday – Sunday: 9.30 – 19.30
Monday: 9.00 – 14.00 – Schools
Monday: 14.30 – 19.30
Thursday and Saturday: 9.30 – 22.30

last entry one hour before closing

Location

Milan, Palazzo Reale
Piazza del Duomo, 12, 10122 – Milano

Tickets

Full price: 14,00€
Reduced price: 12,00€
Visitors aged 18 to 25, handicapped, military, law enforcement officers not in service, teachers, Club Skira
Reduced adult family: 12,00€
alid for families of 1 or 2 adults + children aged 6 to 17 years
Reduced family child: 6,00€
Groups Adult: 12,00€
rom Monday to Sunday. Minimum 15 maximum 25 (tolerance up to 29),
Groups schools: 6,00€
rom Monday to Sunday. Minimum 15 maximum 25 (tolerance up to 29),
Groups + Caravaggio: 22,00€
Schools+ Caravaggio: 12,00€
valid for any day of the week and any time
Free: 0,00€
minors of 6 years, tourist guides qualified with identification card, one accompanying person for each group, two chaperones for each school group, one accompanying disabled person who needs, journalists accredited by the Press Office of the Exhibition, tour guides (upon presentation of card professional qualification)
Presale: 2,00€