Picasso’s Love, Fame, Tragedy in Tate Modern

Tate Modern in London stages its first-ever solo exhibition of Pablo Picasso’s work, one of the most ambitious shows in the museum’s history.

'Picasso 1932: Love, Fame, Tragedy' opened on March 8 and will run through Sept. 9. It takes visitors on a month-by-month journey through 1932, a time so pivotal in Picasso’s life and work that has been called his "year of wonders".

Over 100 outstanding paintings, sculptures and works on paper demonstrate his prolific and restlessly inventive character, stripping away common myths to reveal the man and the artist in his full complexity and richness, Art Daily reported.

1932 was an extraordinary year for Picasso. He cemented his celebrity status as one of the most influential artists of the 20th century. Over the course of this year, he created some of his best loved works.

In his personal life, throughout 1932 Picasso kept a delicate balance between tending to his wife Olga Picasso and their 11-year-old son Paulo, and his professional relationships. The exhibition brings these complex artistic and personal dynamics to life with an unprecedented range of loans from collections around the world, including the Musée National Picasso-Paris and major international museums, as well as many works held in private hands.

Highlights include 'Girl Before a Mirror', a signature painting that rarely leaves The Museum of Modern Art, and the legendary 'The Dream', a color-saturated rendering of Walter in dreamy abandon which has never been exhibited in the UK before.

1932 was a time of both reflection and rejuvenation. Having turned 50, Picasso embarked on the first volume of what remains the most ambitious catalogue of an artist’s work ever made, listing more than 16,000 paintings and drawings.  Realist portraits of Olga and Paulo Picasso from a decade earlier revealed the artist’s pride in and tender feelings for his family, while the first public showing of his most recent paintings made public what had previously been a secret.

The paintings from March including 'Green Leaves', 'Bust' and 'The Mirror' were immediately recognized as a pinnacle of Picasso’s artistic achievement of the inter-war period. This dazzling group is reunited at Tate Modern for the first time in 86 years.

Picasso’s split existence between his homes and studios in Boisgeloup in Normandy and central Paris capture the contradictions of his life at this pivotal moment: divided between countryside retreat and urban bustle as well as painting and sculpture.

The year ended traumatically when Picasso's model Marie-Therese Walter fell seriously ill after swimming in the river Marne, losing most of her iconic blonde hair. In his final works of the year, Picasso transformed the event into grim scenes, creating at the same time an analogy for the thunderclouds gathering over Europe.

Achim Borchardt-Hume, director of exhibitions at Tate Modern and co-curator of the exhibition, said, "Picasso famously described painting as 'just another form of keeping a diary'. This exhibition invites you to get close to the artist. Visitors will be able to walk through 12 months of Picasso’s life to see many of his most ground-breaking and best-loved works in a surprising new light."  Nancy Ireson, curator of international art at Tate and co-curator of the exhibition, said, "Displaying some of Picasso's greatest works in the order in which they were made demonstrates just how intensely creative 1932 was for Picasso, revealing his explosive energy to a new generation."