The Gianadda Museum in Martigny, Switzerland, is exhibiting Picasso’s “final work” in homage to Jacqueline
Picasso lovers will be overjoyed to find 112 Picasso works loaned from the family collection, various museums, and private collections, which have rarely been exhibited. These works were created during the last twenty years of the artist’s career. This was a particularly rich period, strongly influenced by his wife and muse, Jacqueline.
His muse, Jacqueline
In 1952 Picasso was 71 years old, and met a young 25-year-old woman who he fell madly in love with, seduced by her Hispanic, very Mediterranean appearance.
Being close to Jacqueline and her youth was to drive Picasso’s creativity ever faster. He would go through his busiest period and produce paintings, ceramics, prints and sculptures. Jacqueline Roque become his wife in 1961 and went on to be his only model.
Jacqueline can be found everywhere in Picasso’s last works. She is sometimes shown with a hieratic profile high up on a long neck (Jacqueline with Flowers, 1954) or perfectly figurative (Jacqueline with folded legs, 1954). In 1963 she is featured in up to 160 of his works. She occupies the painter’s work entirely. Picasso told his wife that she had “the gift of becoming an unimaginably good painter.
Some works, revisited
It was during this highly creative time that Picasso looked back on other famous pieces such as Manet’s “The Luncheon on the Grass,” “Las Meninas” by Velazques and the “Women of Algiers”. These masterpieces are distracted, disjointed, full of incisive lines and scratched plans.
A meditative journey
As fascinating as it is stunning, the Gianadda Museum exhibition invites you to experience wonder and an inner journey. It is an ode to love, to life and to the world around us, and deserves a visit during your time in Verbier. It is the perfect choice on days when the weather decides to be less than picturesque.
The Gianadda Museum also has a garden that allows us to take a stroll surrounded by sculptures and Roman relics.
“Picasso’s last work, a tribute to Jacqueline,” Gianadda Museum, 59 rue du Forum, Martigny, until November 20. Tel. 027 722 39 78, website www.gianadda.ch Open daily from 9am to 7pm.