The Louvre-Lens is preparing to inaugurate its first Picasso exhibition

What could one of the most acclaimed artists of the 20th century find in the galleries of the most venerable of French museums? This is what the exhibition

proposes to discover

which is about to open at the Louvre-Lens museum on Wednesday, October 13. Charged with 450 works - from painting to ceramics, including drawing and photography - the course intends to highlight the mutual influences as well as the tumultuous relationship of these two titans of the history of art. After twenty exhibitions devoted to the Louvre to this monster of modern art, it will be above all the first foray of the Spanish master into the Lens galleries.

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As the exhibition recounts, the relationship between the Louvre and Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) has not always been good. For a long time, it even oscillated between cautious admiration and frank skepticism, as evidenced for example by press articles inspired by the debates which agitated the Artistic Council of National Museums in 1937. At the time, the project to acquire the

, painted by Picasso in 1921, raised an outcry among the members of the Council, so much so that the collector Maurice de Rothschild - ardent opponent of Picasso's work - would have let go

, that he

. A reluctance that makes you smile todayhui.

The exhibition gives pride of place to bringing together the works of the Louvre with the productions of Pablo Picasso.

FRANCOIS LO PRESTI / AFP

"The Louvre has sometimes been very critical of Picasso, with a sort of incomprehension, among specialists in ancient painting, of the modernity of his work

," explained the curator of the exhibition Dimitri Salmon for AFP

Despite the

of 1937, at which he would happily laugh, the painter nevertheless established good relations with curators at the Louvre such as Georges Salles, in charge of the Asian Arts department.

After a stint at the head of the Guimet museum, he supported and exhibited Picasso once he became director of the museums of France, between 1945 and 1957.

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Dialogue of the Arts

Picasso's firmest and most solid friendship with the Louvre, however, stems from the museum's collections. Within the galleries that he

, Picasso

said AFP Marie Lavandier, director of the Louvre-Lens museum for whom the Spanish artist

An example of dialogue between two works. On the left, a Corinthian aryballa in the shape of an owl; preserved in the Louvre, this ceramic dates from around 640 BC. Our era. Right: the

by Pablo Picasso, dated 1947-1953. RMN-Grand Palais (Musée du Louvre) / Hervé Lewandowski / Succession Picasso 2021 RMN-Grand Palais (Musée national Picasso-Paris) / Adrien Didierjean

From Greek, Etruscan and Roman Antiquities to the vestiges of the ancient Orient without forgetting the departments of Sculptures or Graphic Arts, a reconstruction of the galleries of the great Parisian museum brings the creations of the master closer to those from which he was able to draw inspiration.

The Luncheon on the Grass

.

, enumerated Marie Lavandier.

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A hieratic

in red terracotta from 1950 thus engages in a silent dialogue with another

, an Egyptian from Saqqarah, sculpted in a block of limestone around 2350-2200 BC. Nearby, the visitor is invited to relate a bovine sculpture from 2600 BC with - just above - the leather saddle and the bicycle handlebars which form the

made in 1942. Further on,

by Nicolas Poussin is closely watched by Pablo Picasso's version, painted in 1962 and loaned to the Louvre-Lens by the Center Pompidou.

One of the centerpieces of the tour, the voluptuous accumulation of flesh from

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres'

surrounded by three prints and a drawing signed Picasso, in which - according to the curator of the exhibition - is

of this

Full of shapes, colors and movements, the Louvre thus offered a bottomless color chart in which the cubist painter drew and synthesized as he wished. The museum had turned into a muse.

woven in red thread throughout the course, summarized Dimitri Salmon for AFP.

This exhibition bristling with dialogues and crossed glances will bring out the Parisian Louvre and its Picassian history in the middle of the slag heaps of Pas-de-Calais until January 31, 2022.