The Art Newspaper

Milan gets ready for Picasso blockbuster

Number of advance tickets sold takes organisers by surprise

By Ermanno Rivetti. Web only
Published online: 01 August 2012

Deux femmes courant sur la plage (La course)

More than 250 works from the Musée National Picasso, Paris, will go on display in Milan's Palazzo Reale, the only European stop in a global tour of the exhibition of the Spanish artist's work that began in 2011. Around 88,000 advance tickets have already been sold for “Pablo Picasso: Masterpieces from the Musée National Picasso in Paris” (20 September-6 January 2013).

Natalina Costa, the director of cultural organisation 24 Ore Cultura, says: “We certainly expected a lot of attention—Picasso is Picasso—but we were still surprised by the pre-sales.”

The show's Italian leg is being organised by 24 Ore Cultura along with the city of Milan, the commission for culture, fashion and design, and Palazzo Reale. Works due to be featured include La Celestina (the celestine), 1904, Portrait d’Olga dans un fauteuil (portrait of Olga in an armchair), 1918, Deux femmes courant sur la plage (La course) (two women running on a beach (the race)), around 1922, and Portrait de Dora Maar, 1937.

The tour, which has helped fund the refurbishment of the Musée National Picasso, has included the De Young Museum, San Francisco, where attendance topped 335,000, the Chinese Pavilion, Shanghai, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, and the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, (until 26 August). Milan is borrowing significantly more works than the other venues.

La Célestine (La Femme à la Taie), 1904