Picasso 1969-1972 - The End of the Beginning

Catalogue of the exhibition Picasso 1969-1972 - The End of the Beginning, presented at the Musée Picasso, Antibes (April 8 - July 2, 2023).

"Picasso invaded the Palace of the Popes in Avignon at the head of a column of more than a hundred men, accompanied by more than thirty women, two dwarfs, two Harlequins and a Pierrot, several children, a few bunches of flowers and some fruit. [...] They entered the largest and most solemn of the papal halls ... and with a mysterious and silent chatter, they hung on the walls ... and began to speak: "We arrived here just born. We are a little over a year old..." Thus the poet Rafael, a great friend of Picasso, summed up the great Avignon exhibition of 1971 in his introduction to the catalog, giving a perfect echo to the Picassian production of these last years.

As he advanced in age, Picasso returned to his Spanish origins: he revisited the gallery of his familiar characters, the bullfighters, the musketeers, and painted pictures that seemed to take shape before our eyes, in a loose workmanship that surprised us.

If Picasso looks to the Spanish Golden Age, he also holds up a mirror to Rembrandt as well as to Frans Hals, relying on a painting that is faithful to its ancient definition, while emancipating himself from any obligation to History, as well as to modern art.
He intends to assume the lyricism of his works on the high walls of the Popes' Palace in Avignon, in 1970 and 1973.

From now on, the exuberance that in his last paintings is expressed by vivid colors, and most often, by large formats, testifies to the extraordinary creative power of the artist, in a freedom that does not hesitate to free itself from the values of the time, even to question them,