{"id":618858,"date":"2026-10-02T22:32:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-02T22:32:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/618858\/"},"modified":"2026-10-02T22:32:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T22:32:11","slug":"auckland-art-gallery-picasso-exhibition-brings-80-works-to-auckland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/618858\/","title":{"rendered":"Auckland Art Gallery Picasso exhibition brings 80 works to Auckland"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Picasso:Picasso: Designed by Paul Smith features dozens of the artist\u2019s tortured, complex and colourful works. Photo \/ Vinciane Lebrun, Voyez-Vous, courtesy of the Mus\u00e9e national Picasso-Paris<\/p>\n

Co-curated by Matthiesson and members from the Mus\u00e9e National Picasso-Paris, the exhibit will hold the largest number of Picassos ever in Aotearoa at one time. From paintings and prints to drawings, ceramic works and sculptures, the 80 works have been drawn from key periods in Picasso\u2019s career: his sombre Blue Period, where he painted in cool hues; the perkier Rose Period, warmed up with shades of orange, pink and red; then the masterstroke, the advent of Cubism delivering fractured canvases in giddying perspectives.<\/p>\n

Renowned British fashion designer Sir Paul Smith dreamed up the layout of the exhibit. Gallery-goers will be treated to 15 visually contrasting rooms, where Smith has boldly experimented with lighting, colour and patterned walls to mimic the artist\u2019s signature motifs of stripes and harlequin prints.<\/p>\n

One room, dedicated to the artist\u2019s obsession with bullfighting, is painted a fiery red, making a brilliant contrast to his many elegant black and white bullfighting drawings. Other highlights include the room dedicated to Picasso\u2019s many interpretations later in his career of Edouard Manet\u2019s Luncheon on the Grass (1883), which is a vivid green room with artificial grass underfoot. If Smith\u2019s brief was to have fun with Picasso \u2013 mission accomplished.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"PabloPablo Picasso’s Le D\u00e9jeuner sur l\u2019herbe d\u2019apr\u00e8s Manet, 1960, oil on canvas. Photo \/ GrandPalaisRmn (Mus\u00e9e national Picasso Paris), Mathieu Rabeau, Press Service, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o T\u0101maki<\/p>\n

Sadness as a gift<\/p>\n

Picasso, who trained as a painter in his native Spain, arrived in Paris as a teen. Too poor to afford to live in the glamorous centre of the city, he ended up in Montmartre, which at this stage was no more than a \u201cshanty town\u201d, says Matthiesson.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe arrived as an outsider on the outskirts of the city. Housing was cheap and congested, yet he enjoyed the company and collegiality of many other artists. The poor and dispossessed were all around him. The Blue Period picks up on this aesthetic.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Portrait d\u2019homme [Portrait of a man], winter 1902\u201303, we see a solemn young man painted in only blue hues with an equally blue, blank expression. Picasso later revealed the identity of the sitter as \u201ca sort of madman one saw in the streets\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"PabloPablo Picasso’s Portrait d’homme, 1902-1903, oil on canvas. Photo \/ GrandPalaisRmn (Mus\u00e9e national Picasso-Paris), Mathieu Rabeau, Press Service, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o T\u0101maki<\/p>\n

During Picasso\u2019s Blue Period (1901-1904), the artist was on the poverty line and had lost close friend Carles Casagemas to suicide, triggering a depressive era that lasted several years.<\/p>\n

Charmer, cheater<\/p>\n

The iconic portraits of women Picasso produced over his lifetime demonstrated both his love of women and his wariness. Throughout his career, he often reduced women to archetypes, viewing them as either divine goddesses or suffering figures.<\/p>\n

His first wife, Olga Khokhlova, was the daughter of a Russian colonel and from a well-to-do family; she met Picasso in 1917 while dancing with the Ballets Russes in Paris. Mindful of Khokhlova\u2019s sense of propriety, Picasso\u2019s early portraits of her, including Portrait d\u2019Olga sur un sofa [Portrait of Olga on a Sofa] summer 1918, consciously avoided the distortion of the Cubist style, instead reintroducing a sense of timeless classicism. Until things went sour.<\/p>\n

\u201cHis deteriorating relationship coincided with his adoption of surrealism and its emphasis on revealing subconscious thoughts,\u201d Matthiesson explained. And portraits that were, let\u2019s say, not as flattering.<\/p>\n

Marie-Th\u00e9r\u00e8se Walter, yet another model in Picasso\u2019s life, was just 17 when she met 45-year-old Picasso. He kept his affair with the golden-haired, voluptuous teen secret, remaining married to Olga, who had borne his first child, Paulo.<\/p>\n

Matthiessen says the young Marie-Th\u00e9r\u00e8se was \u201cquietly seductive\u201d, and love-struck Picasso painted many erotic pictures of her.<\/p>\n

The pair ended up having a child together, Maya, who features in the work, Maya \u00e0 la poup\u00e9e, 1938.<\/p>\n

\"MayaMaya \u00e0 la poup\u00e9e, 1938. Photo \/ GrandPalaisRmn (Mus\u00e9e national Picasso-Paris), Adrien Didierjean, Press Service, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o T\u0101maki<\/p>\n

\u201cIf something or someone captures his attention, he wants to devour it; once he gets inside their skin, he tends to move on and is quite unsentimental about it. Those obsessions could sustain him for five to seven years.\u201d<\/p>\n

La Lecture, 1932, depicts Marie-Th\u00e9r\u00e8se Walter, relaxing with a book upon her lap. The figure appears as a web of interweaving lines and coloured areas that mesh the body and chair together. This overlapping of planes creates a new perspective typical of Picasso\u2019s reinterpretation of Cubism in the 1930s.<\/p>\n

Another work in the show, Buste de femme au chapeau, 1939, was based on his lover and muse, French photographer and painter Dora Maar. He painted many portraits of the fashionable Maar wearing hats during the late 1930s and 1940s, capturing her quirky style and the tension of wartime Paris.<\/p>\n

It was Dora Maar who set out to seduce Picasso this time, says Matthiesson.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s this general perception that he was a user, but women also went out of their way to win Picasso\u2019s attention. Dora Maar was a challenge \u2013 she was steeped in psychoanalytic theory and was super avant-garde. She had masochistic tendencies and was only interested in difficult, challenging art. It\u2019s Dora Maar who is credited with getting him interested in politics.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"PabloPablo Picasso, Buste de femme au chapeau ray\u00e9, 1939. Photo \/ GrandPalaisRmn (Mus\u00e9e national Picasso-Paris), Mathieu Rabeau, Press Service \/ Auckland Art Gallery Toi o T\u0101maki.<\/p>\n

Yet again, it doesn\u2019t last.<\/p>\n

By 1943, Picasso met the tall, beautiful Fran\u00e7oise Gilot, also an accomplished painter and 40 years younger than Picasso. Fran\u00e7oise was with Picasso for nearly a decade and bore two children, Claude and Paloma, before leaving him, much to his fury \u2013 the only woman to have done so.<\/p>\n

An abstract thinker and collector<\/p>\n

\u201cPicasso was always interested in images from outside his own culture that would allow him to break away from conventional forms of perception, such as ancient Iberian sculptures, African masks and Oceanic images. He looked to the imagery of other cultures to reinvigorate his own,\u201d says Matthiesson.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was a magpie, taking bits and pieces of inspiration from other artists, animals, objects, children and everyday life. You could see his art as a visual diary; he dated almost everything he made, right down to the time. We know where he was and what was consuming him daily.\u201d<\/p>\n

The day he purchased two sculptures would change the course of his art forever.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was offered two Iberian sculptures, a head of a man and a woman; what he didn\u2019t realise is, they had been stolen.\u201d<\/p>\n

The artist studied these heads intensely in his studio, taking note of their simplified, geometric facial planes; this examination would catalyse his transition from classical painter to Cubist pioneer, offering multiple perspectives of his subjects.<\/p>\n

Buste de femme ou de marin (\u00c9tude pour \u201cLes Demoiselles d\u2019Avignon\u201d) is a preparatory painting for this first Cubist masterpiece, Les Demoiselles d\u2019Avignon, 1907. The work shows recognisable influences from the Iberian heads, which were eventually, anonymously, returned to the Louvre, as Picasso was concerned about the consequences of being in possession of stolen goods.<\/p>\n

\"BusteBuste de femme ou de marin (\u00e9tude pour \u201cLes Demoiselles d\u2019Avignon\u201d), 1907. Photo \/ GrandPalaisRmn (Mus\u00e9e national Picasso-Paris), Adrien Didierjean, Press Service, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o T\u0101maki<\/p>\n

The Pied Piper<\/p>\n

Picasso also fostered intense relationships with animals, says Matthiesson. They frequently leaped on to his canvases, appearing as symbolic figures like minotaurs and the half-man-half-goat creature known as the faun or satyr; these alter egos representing the duality of humanity, male sexuality and a return to nature.<\/p>\n

The artist even had a real-life goat to study. Esmeralda shared his home in Cannes and was much loved by Picasso, who morphed her into experimental sculptures.<\/p>\n

Birds appear throughout his work too. The owl motif was common in his paintings and ceramics and based on a real-life bird.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe injured owl had been given to him in Antibes; he bandaged it up and raised it in his studio. The owl becomes a guardian-type figure in his work,\u201d says Matthiesson.<\/p>\n

He painted doves as well (he named his daughter Paloma \u2013 Spanish for Dove) and, of course, bulls.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe somehow manages to capture the essence of the animals he paints. The bullfighting works portray the test of masculinity \u2013 and reflect his Spanish heritage and his fond memories of going to bullfights with his father,\u201d Matthiesson explains.<\/p>\n

\"T\u00eateT\u00eate de taureau, 1931, saddle and handlebars (leather and metal). Photo \/ GrandPalaisRmn (Mus\u00e9e national Picasso-Paris), Mathieu Rabeau, Press Service, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o T\u0101maki<\/p>\n

The father who yearned to see as a child<\/p>\n

Following the birth of his much-awaited first child, Paulo with Olga in 1921, Picasso embraced fatherhood. He delighted in depicting his young son playing with animals and toys. Fatherhood offered the artist a child\u2019s view of the world again.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe envied children for their innocent and primeval way of seeing the world.<\/p>\n

He\u2019d often get down on the floor to play with his children; this led him to paint from this perspective.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Picasso famously said, \u201cIt took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.\u201d Perhaps his children and his many lovers aided him in this ambition. They never had a choice.<\/p>\n

Picasso: Designed by Paul Smith is on exhibition at the Auckland Art Gallery from October 10, 2026, to February 1, 2027.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Picasso: Designed by Paul Smith features dozens of the artist\u2019s tortured, complex and colourful works. Photo \/ Vinciane…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":618859,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[88233,1443,1228,4914,51,4057,1038,8458,304725,117183,156,4296,60019,36090,1229,124375,174578,16569,6036,424,304726,111,139,69,35731,2730,21747,5843,412,301,7563,61,15146],"class_list":["post-618858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-88233","tag-about","tag-art","tag-artists","tag-auckland","tag-behind","tag-brings","tag-colourful","tag-cubist","tag-curator","tag-entertainment","tag-exhibition","tag-famed","tag-fisher","tag-gallery","tag-gallerys","tag-ginny","tag-iconic","tag-know","tag-life","tag-matthiesson","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-painter","tag-personal","tag-picasso","tag-senior","tag-sophie","tag-talks","tag-those","tag-to","tag-works"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=618858"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618858\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/618859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=618858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=618858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=618858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}