Pablo Picasso, Femme aux mains jointes (étude pour Les Demoiselles d'Avignon), 1907, Huile sur toile © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée national Picasso-Paris) / Mathieu Rabeau © Succession Picasso 2023
To mark the 50th anniversary of Picasso’s death, the Musée du Luxembourg is organizing a major exhibition on the story of an extraordinary friendship between two icons of the 20th century, Pablo Picasso and Gertrude Stein.
Gertrude Stein (1874-1946), a Jewish American immigrant, was a writer, poet and aesthete who moved to Paris in 1903 shortly after the arrival of Picasso, then a young artist. Their membership of the city's bohemian community, as well as their artistic freedom, were informed by their status as foreigners and their marginality. Their friendship crystallized around their respective work, which laid the foundations for Cubism and the pictorial and literary avant-gardes of the 20th century. Their posterity is immense.
By examining their closeness and inventiveness, the exhibition at the Musée du Luxembourg will explore a century of art, poetry, music and theater through key figures such as Henri Matisse, Juan Gris, Marcel Duchamp, Ed Ruscha, Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, Bruce Nauman, Carl Andre, Joseph Kosuth, Roni Horn, Hanne Darboven, Glenn Ligon, John Cage, Steve Reich, Bob Wilson, Gary Hill and Philip Glass.