Musée Picasso - Hotel Salé

The musée Picasso on rue de Thorigny in the 3rd arrondissement is an attraction you shouldn't miss.

Last century's greatest artist, Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), found a stately home at the Hotel Salé, a fancy 17th century palace.

In 1985 the museum opens with Picasso's private collection donated to the state. You can read books on Picasso and see selected works elsewhere (currently the Jeu de Paume in the Jardins des Tuileries shows his erotic art!), but nowhere to my knowledge can you "live" his life in a fascinating tour through his many periods displayed in the palace rooms. The self-explanatory titles of his sculptures, paintings, drawings, give you an idea of his daily preoccupation.

Picasso comes to Paris from Spain in the early 20s century and his career takes off. The fertility of his genius is overwhelming: Three Dutch Girls (1905), a gouache on cardboard, presages his most famous painting, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. The Seated Nude and The Jester, are his fuel. Early photographs show him in his first studio on 130ter, boulevard de Clichy. In 1908 he moves to Montmartre, to the Bateau-Lavoir. Surrounded by Max Jacob and Georges Bracques, he starts deconstructing shapes and initiates Cubism. He makes music out of paintings. Influenced by African and Polynesian art, he carves a figure out of wood splashed with yellow paint. His private collection of Paul Cézanne's Château Noir (1905), Five Bathers (1877/78), The Sea at L'Estaque (1978/79) inspire his cubist patterns - a musical explosion. Henri Matisse, André Derain, Joan Miro are his soulmates.

Leaving Cubism behind, The Seated Woman(1920) series begins a new period where human hands and feet are disproportional, exaggerated. The Running Minotaur (1928), The Acrobat, La Grande Baigneuse show him at the height of his expression on the way through Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism. But there is an exquisite woman in a red armchair, an almost hyperrealist painting, too. The huge collage Femmes aux toilettes anticipates his most famous political statement against the Spanish war, Guernica. Dora Maar, a young photographer, and Marie-Thèrese Weber become his muses.

During the war in Paris and afterwards, his sardonic humor give birth to Bull's Head(1942), a minimalist bike handle and saddle, and The Goat(1950); Le Dejeuner sur l'herbe and Springtime(1956) show his love of nature, his inner harmony and success. The Seated Harlequin(1961) is his peaceful message to the century.

Musée Picasso