Eva Rinaldi Artist: Picasso: Masterpieces from the Musee National Picasso: Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney, Australia

Sunday, January 8, 2012

Picasso: Masterpieces from the Musee National Picasso: Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney, Australia

Sydney, Australia, is once again the home for some of the world's finest and most celebrated art - thanks to the late Pablo Picasso.

It was Picasso that once cleverly said "I am the greatest collector of Picassos in the world." Words such as these further help build the unique media and marketing machine that he was - which backed up his genius body of work which went on to become legend.

Music News Australia and its media partners are pleased to advise the public that there's still over one month left for those in Sydney to visit the Picasso collection at the Art Gallery of NSW. This is welcome news for the many who had previously believed they had missed this opportunity.

It was last November when the pick of Picasso's works were unveiled in the Art Gallery of NSW.

"These are the works that meant most to him," the gallery's director, Edmund Capon, told a packed house.

The exhibition - on loan from Paris museum - Musée National Picasso, in Paris, represented "7½ decades of the artist who I think defines the 20th century", he said.

It was the most significant Picasso expo anyone would see in Australia in their lifetime. 150 plus paintings, sculptures, drawings and prints are in Picasso: Masterpieces from the Musee National Picasso.

They are beautifully displayed in 10 rooms in chronological periods of Picasso's life, starting with a drawing from 1893, when he was 12, and commencing with pieces made approximately six months before his death in 1973.

Reviews have been overwhelmingly positive, as one would expect.

You have the iconic works many fans would have seen in art books since their school days. Among them are Portrait of Dora Maar (1937), Two Women Running on the Beach (The Race) (1922) and Figures At the Seashore (1931).

To deal with with the expectations of more than 300,000 visitors over the show's 4½ months, it has introduced tickets with "timed" entry at half-hour intervals to reduce queueing. More than 20,000 have already been sold.

The Musee National Picasso houses the largest collection of the artist's work, much from his private collection. Its closure for renovations has allowed the work to tour the globe, with Sydney been the latest lucky city to show off the work.

The museum's president, Anne Baldassari, curated the Sydney show, which runs until March 25. "It's just masterpieces," she said. "It's a monumental show.

"It's a comprehensive show."

The show obviously has a huge appeal for Picasso fans and art lover in general, but even those who appreciate genius and the creative world in general will walk away happy having taken in the best that Picasso has to offer.

Official Promo...

Picasso masterpieces from the Musée National Picasso, Paris

This summer see the greatest Picasso exhibition ever to come to Australia.

Some 150 paintings, drawings and sculptures will fill most of the ground floor of the Art Gallery of NSW. These are ‘Picasso’s Picassos’, personal and revealing works that he kept to shape his own legacy.

Made possible only by the closure of the Musée National Picasso in Paris for renovations, the Gallery is the only venue in Australia on the exhibition’s world tour.

This is a rare opportunity to see work from the world’s most celebrated artist on such scale outside France.

An Australian first, the exhibition showcases seven decades of Pablo Picasso’s art. Every phase of his extraordinary career is represented, including masterpieces from the Blue, Rose, expressionist, cubist, neoclassical and surrealist periods. Read more

We’ve introduced timed ticketing to avoid queues. We strongly recommend that you pre-purchase a timed-entry ticket through Ticketek as times and dates will sell out.