Five architecture and landscape teams have been selected to compete for the Musée National Picasso‑Paris's project to create the “world’s leading garden of Picasso sculptures” in 2030. On Friday (11 September), the museum and Paloma Picasso, the artist’s daughter, revealed the shortlisted designers.
The five teams selected for the international competition are: Antoine Dufour and Wagon Landscaping; Lina Ghotmeh, Pierre-Antoine Gatier and Florence Mercier Paysagiste; NeM Niney et Marca Architectes and Atelier Jacqueline Osty & Associés; Stanton Williams, Atelier PNG, Vogt and Francesca Torzo; and Drubigny Architecte and Sarah Price Landscapes. The winner of the architectural competition will be chosen by an international jury by next January.
The museum intends to display around ten major Picasso bronzes in a public garden at the rear of its 17th century hotel particulier, in the historical Marais district. The Paris museum, which owns the most important collection of his sculptures, around 350 pieces, also plans to reshape a corridor along the square as an 800 sq. m exhibition hall. The museum will also renovate part of the historical house to create spaces for a bookstore and a cafeteria.
The €55m project is made possible by a collaboration with the artist’s family, the city of Paris and the Don Quixote Foundation, a philanthropic organisation co-founded by the Dutch aristocrat and venture capital executive Rolly van Rappard, the Musée National Picasso‑Paris’s director Cécile Debray says. The museum has already raised €40m for the project by casting and selling four bronzes to the Dutch foundation, which will join works by Alberto Giacometti, Louise Bourgeois, Henry Moore and others in the new Don Quixote Pavilion and Gardens at the Rijksmuseum. Announced last January, the Don Quixote Foundation will donate €60m to develop the garden and give a large number of sculptures on long-term loan.
Until now, Picasso's family had resisted to consent to posthumous casts in bronze, but changed its mind in order to support the project, Paloma Picasso said at a press conference. The four bronzes that have been cast and sold to the Don Quixote Foundation are La chèvre (the goat, 1952), a life-size statue displayed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York; La guenon et son petit (Female baboon and child, 1951); a Woman’s head and bust (1930), from the period that the artist spent in Normandy in the manor of Boisgeloup; and Petite fille sautant à la corde (Little girl jumping rope, 1950), made when the artist was experimenting with ceramics in Vallauris on the French Riviera.
Many of Picasso’s sculptures are assemblages of found materials that he made with a mix of invention and humour. For the sculpture of the little girl, he used a wicker basket, a cake pan and a pair of children's shoes; for the baboon’s face, two of his son’s car toys. Glass bottles served for the goat’s udder and a palm leaf for her back, covered with terracotta and plaster.
The museum has also cast, through the Swiss foundry Saint Gallen, four statues for its own garden, including the two-metre-high Femme au jardin (Woman at the garden, 1929-30), conceived as an homage to the poet Guillaume Apollinaire. Recreating the myth of Apollo and Daphne, during the short time when Picasso took inspiration from his Surrealist friends, it is the most important piece that he designed in painted metal, with the help of his friend Julio Gonzalez. Intended for Apollinaire’s tombstone, it was rejected as too modernist and stayed in Boisgeloup.
Picasso conceived several public monuments. Nevertheless, apart from a small sculpture of a woman’s head in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés square, the city of Paris, where he arrived at the age of 19, does not currently feature any of his statues on public display.
“My father always wanted his sculptures to be close to the people”, Paloma said, adding that she was “very happy” to see this consecration of Picasso’s sculpture, “which is an important part of the work of such a complete artist and is not truly recognised for its value”.
