April 8, 2023 will mark the 50th anniversary of Pablo Picasso's death. In order to commemorate the work of the cubist genius, France and Spain have agreed to declare 2023 as the Year of Picasso and to organize 42 exhibitions and various events in some thirty institutions in Europe and the USA. 

"Our goal, in short, is to vindicate Picasso's artistic legacy and the validity of his work. If there is an artist who defines the 20th century, who represents it with all its cruelty, violence, passion, excesses and contradictions, it is undoubtedly Pablo Picasso. It will also allow us to face him from a contemporary perspective, helping us to understand with today's eyes an artist who is still alive 50 years after his death," said Miquel Iceta, Spain's Minister of Culture and Sports, at the inauguration of the Picasso Year, which took place last September 2022 at an event at the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid, in front of Picasso's emblematic Guernica.

The commemoration includes a total of 42 exhibitions and events in 38 major institutions in Europe and the United States: 16 in Spain, 12 in France, seven in the United States, two in Germany, two in Switzerland, one in the Principality of Monaco, one in Romania and one in Belgium.

Those of the United States are as follows: Cubism and the Trompe l’Oeil Tradition, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, currentñy on view. (October 20, 2022 – January 22, 2023). The Met will also host a second Picasso show titled “Les peintures pour Hamilton Easter Field,” opening one year from today.

 The Guggenheim in New York will open “Young Picasso in Paris” on May 12, 2023, centered around Picasso’s Le Moulin de la Galette. It will explore transformations spurred by Picasso’s first Parisian pilgrimage while demonstrating his “shrewd exercises in character study,” a statement says.

In February 2023, the Mint Museum in Charlotte, N.C, will host "Picasso's Landscapes: Out of Bonds": Through a selection of more than 40 works spanning Picasso’s full career, this exhibition  explores the depth of the artist’s engagement with landscape subjects along with his expansive approach to this traditional genre.  The Mint Museum is the first of only three venues in the United States — and the only venue on the East Coast — to feature this exceptional exhibition filled with works from private collections and international museums together for the first time. The exhibition will then travel to Cincinnati Museum of Art. Third venue to be confirmed.

In September 2023, Picasso and La Celestina at the Hispanic Society Museum and Library in New York.

Finally, in June 2023, the Brooklyn Museum will open a show curated by Australian comedian Hannah Gadsby alongside Lisa Small and Catherine Morris that stages “a reevaluation of Picasso’s practice and reception through a feminist lens.”

"Let's be honest, today there is a lot of debate around the reception of Picasso's work, particularly regarding his relationship with women. To bring Picasso's art to younger generations, we must give them the keys to understanding his work and his life as a whole," said the French Minister of Culture, Rima Abdul Malak, at the inaguration ceremony of The Year of Picasso.

"It is important for the public to have this knowledge, to know the painter better and also the part of violence, we must not cover it up," she added.

Beyond the artist's relationship with women, the French minister declared that, given the context of the war in Ukraine, his work "helps to question what is the violence of war and to think about it."

Iceta, referring to Picasso's masterpiece 'Guernica', said that "it constitutes a plea against barbarism, the terror of war and is a universal symbol in defense of peace".

Picasso in Barcelona

In Barcelona, the 'Picasso Year' will start with the opening of the first exhibition at the Picasso Museum in November 2022, dedicated to the relationship between the painter from Malaga and his art dealer, Daniel Henry Kahnweiler.

The second exhibition, at the same museum, is scheduled for October 2023 and will be dedicated to explaining the relationship between Picasso and the artist Joan Miró. 

"Barcelona is where Picasso develops intellectually, where he begins to be aware of everything he is going to be capable of," Emmanuel Guigon, director of the Picasso Museum, told The Barcelona Post.

In addition, two academic congresses will also be organized, an essential meeting point for scientific exchanges between researchers and experts on the artist's work and an opportunity to elaborate a historiographical study of Picasso's oeuvre. One of the congresses will take place at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid this fall, followed by a major international symposium to be held in Paris on December 6-8, 2023 at UNESCO headquarters.