Picasso and the ancient, Picasso and the Ligurian roots of his family or 'The origins of the myth'.
Thus Italy celebrates, with two major exhibitions respectively at the Mann in Naples from 5 April to 27 August and at the Firmafede Fortress in Sarzana from 8 April to 16 July, the fiftieth anniversary of the death of the artist born in Malaga, on 25 October 1881 , and disappeared in Mougins, on the French Riviera, on April 8, 1973.
Both exhibitions are part of the very rich international calendar of commemorations that have already been carried out for months by the most important institutions and museums in Europe and the United States, and are among the very few initiatives organized in Italy.
For the occasion, in fact, France and Spain have decided to work together by setting up a committee which gave life to Picasso Celebration 1973-2023, over sixty exhibitions and events in Europe (Germany, Switzerland, Principality of Monaco, Romania and Belgium) and North America in the name of a historiographical analysis of Picasso's work.
In fact, there was no artist greater than him in the 1900s, capable of combining and declining his creative 'doing' with ever-evolving ways and times,
that now the many exhibitions have tried to tell as they permanently tell so many museums dedicated to his name in the many cities where he lived, from Malaga to Barcelona, from Paris to Antibes.
Not to mention the wonderful works of this prolific artist that can be found from the Reina Sofia in Madrid to the Moma in New York.
Picasso has left his mark on the world, there is no doubt about it, a mark that can perhaps be summed up in that timeless masterpiece that is Guernica, where the senselessness of war and its destruction never cease to be as delirious as heartbreaking news.
"Picasso's family was Ligurian and it is therefore an exhibition that also acquires an even deeper meaning for this reason, it is a return to the origins - explains the curator of the exhibition at the Firmafede Fortress Lola Durán Úcar - If there is something that can arriving to explain the complex personality of Picasso is his passion, his curiosity, his immense eagerness to know and experiment.Picasso uses a marked and unmistakable pictorial language, full of genius, which revolutionized the twentieth century,
On display 18 photographs, some by Juan Gyenes, from the Gyenes Archive and others by Robert Capa as well as lithographs, aquatints, etchings, drypoints, ceramics and the famous painting Tête de femme.
Instead, the relationship between 'Picasso and the ancient' is explored at the National Archaeological Museum of Naples.
The exhibition "starts from the evocative story of his famous visit to Naples and Pompeii in 1917", says the director of MaNN Paolo Giulierini.
"We are facing the most refined dialogue ever composed between the Master's drawings and works and the statues and frescoes of the Farnese and Pompeian collections. No museum in the world could construct such a symmetry".
Among the many marvels on display is the exceptional loan from the British Museum in London of 37 of the 100 tables that make up the Vollard Suite.