Naomi Campbell will offer a supermodel’s perspective on the intimate relationship between artist and muse in an essay for an upcoming exhibition of Pablo Picasso paintings being staged by Nahmad Contemporary in Switzerland. The New York-headquartered gallery was founded in 2013 by Joseph Nahmad, a scion of the billionaire art-dealing family. Nahmad’s father, David Nahmad, is believed to have the largest private collection of works by Picasso.
The show, to be staged at Tarmak22 gallery in Gstaad from 14 February to 15 March, will include 14 works from the Picasso series Le Peintre et son modèle (the painter and his model), completed late in Picasso’s life between 1963 and 1965, though he explored this classic motif repeatedly throughout his career.
An accompanying essay by Campbell—a longtime friend of the Nahmad family—draws from “her lived experience of inhabiting the gaze”, according to the gallery, which invited Campbell to take part.
“I’ve lived most of my life in front of the camera, which gives me a singular perspective on the relationship between artist and model. It’s complex, layered and charged with power,” Campbell said in a statement.
Pablo Picasso's Le Peintre et son modèle (The painter and his model), 1963, oil on canvas. ©2026 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
The series of paintings scrutinise desire, intimacy and power between an artist at his easel and the nude woman posing before him. Picasso produced the works shortly after marrying the woman who would prove to be his final wife, Jacqueline Roque, who was more than four decades his junior. The gallery says the model in each may be a stand-in for Jacqueline. Paintings included in the exhibition include works previously exhibited at institutions including the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Fondation Beyeler outside Basel, the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid and and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York.
In her essay, Campbell writes that the Le Peintre et son modèle series struck a chord with her, given the parallels in the dynamic between a model and painter and a model and photographer—a relationship she’s grown familiar with over her decades-long career.
“In a world where visibility is treated as currency and self-exposure is mistaken for power, these works feel especially relevant,” Campbell writes. “They ask us to consider what it means to look, and to be looked at, at a moment when images circulate endlessly and intimacy is increasingly flattened.”
