NEW MASTERPIECES. LA DATION MAYA-RUIZ PICASSO

Location : Level 0, Hôtel Salé
Curators : Emilia Philippot in collaboration with: Virginie Perdrisot, Johan Popelard, Juliette Pozzo, Joanne Snrech 

This exhibition celebrates the addition of nine masterpieces to the French national collections – six paintings, two sculptures and a sketchbook – via the country’s gifts-in-lieu scheme, which was introduced on 31 December 1968, allowing inheritance tax to be paid in kind. This unique acquisition mode is key to the very identity of Musée Picasso, which was founded in 1979 specifically to house the donation made by Pablo Picasso under this system. Accepted by the French state in 2021, the Maya Ruiz-Picasso donation, and made by the artist’s daughter with Marie-Thérèse Walter, born in 1935, is fully aligned with the museum’s founding history and governing ethos. This exhibition is organised chronologically and structured around these nine masterpieces, held by the artist’s daughter since she inherited them. Each room sets these pieces alongside groups of works from the museum’s collection as well as presenting a dialogue with a specially selected loan work. Drawing on a rich array of paintings, sculptures and graphic works by Picasso, works from his own personal collection and a selection of outstanding loans, the show also offers new insights in the fields of non-Western, ancient and modern art.

MAYA RUIZ-PICASSO. DAUGHTER OF PABLO
Location : Level 1, Hôtel Salé 
Curators : Emilia Philippot 
Diana Widmaier-Picasso

María de la Concepción, known as Maya, was born on 5 September 1935. She was Pablo Picasso’s first daughter, born of his passionate love for Marie-Thérèse Walter, the young woman he met in 1927 when she was just seventeen. Marie-Thérèse pervades his painting in the early 1930s and inspired one of Picasso’s most prolific periods. The exhibition "Maya Ruiz-Picasso, daughter of Pablo" brings together a significant ensemble of these portraits, re-examining this phase of the artist’s career through the prism of the close bond between father and daughter and showing how Maya’s presence nourished and amplified the artist’s fascination with childhood. This chapter of Picasso’s intimate history is illustrated with major works from the 1930s – portraits of Maya and Marie-Thérèse – sculptures, paper cut-outs, and memorabilia including letters, poems, and personal objects. Accompanied by a large number of photographs, some shown here for the first time, the exhibition also explores Picasso’s relationship with his children more generally, especially during his years in Cannes when the artist shared happy family time with all four of them at once.