A blockbuster exhibition dedicated to Pablo Picasso and Alberto Giacometti is due to open in Qatar early next year. Picasso-Giacometti (22 February-21 May), which will launch at the Fire Station Artist in Residence centre in Doha, opened earlier this year in Paris at the Musée National Picasso (until 5 February).
The exhibition includes more than 80 works drawn from the collections of the Musée National Picasso and the Fondation Giacometti in Paris. These include The She Goat by Picasso (1950) and Giacometti’s Tall Woman (1960).
The curators, including Catherine Grenier, the director of the Fondation Giacometti, highlight the “correspondences between their works, the influence of the surrealist movement, and the return to realism during the post-war period”, says a press statement.
Artist residencies will continue at the Fire Station, says a spokeswoman for Qatar Museums, the government body behind the oil-rich country’s art initiatives. “The studio spaces are separate from the gallery spaces used,” she says.
The Picasso-Giacometti show is the latest high-profile culture initiative aimed at putting the Gulf state on the culture map. Other major exhibitions held in Qatar include a vast show of more than 500 works by the Iraqi artist Dia al-Azzawi at Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art and QM Gallery Al Riwaq (until 16 April). Meanwhile, the National Museum designed by the French architect Jean Nouvel has been delayed and is now due to open next year.
