A cultural journey through the Musée Picasso in Paris

The Musée Picasso in Paris is famous for its extensive collection of artworks by Spanish artist Pablo Picasso.

Marais District Paris

I walked through the Marais district to get to the museum. It was my first time visiting Paris alone, and it was a wonderful feeling to walk the streets and soak up the city's energy. Like living a childhood fantasy of a life once imagined.

I would meet up with a friend in a few hours, but at that moment, I was overcome by the old-world beauty of the city. Tall, sand-coloured buildings lined the streets. Having grown up in the remnants of the old Cape colony, I've always felt a strange familiarity with European cities, a homecoming of sorts.

It was an overcast day with intermittent drizzling. Walking through the streets, I saw Parisians going about their lives. Parents collecting children from créche, couples entering a grocery store to pick up a few items. Observing the mundane and familiar of another place has always been my favourite part of travel.

Walking down the streets of the Marais District - Marais means marsh in French

I was in a hurry to get to the museum as I would only have an hour to explore its collection before closing time. I turned a corner to see the sign which read Picasso and turned into the courtyard of the Hôtel Salé, the building within which the collection is housed.

Hôtel Salé, Paris, France

Hôtel Salé

Walking into the Hôtel Salé, the home of the Musée Picasso, is a sensory experience. A typical Mazarin building, an architectural style which drew inspiration from earlier architectural traditions, particularly classical and Baroque elements.

The Italian baroque, introduced by Cardinal Mazarin, inspired architects approach space in new ways. This was combined with François Mansart's legacy of introducing classicism into Baroque architecture in France. The design of the Hôtel Salé was an innovation of the time and comprises two corps de logis —two lines of rooms which extend the building's surface area.

In order to visit the Picasso exhibition, you enter the hotel and descend a set of stairs to an underground section of the museum. This is where the permanent Picasso exhibition resides.

Picasso Exhibition

This combination of 17th-century mansion and the vibrancy of Picasso's art, is a heady mix indeed. The journey through the exhibit is a curated progression through Picasso's life and work. Each room reveals a different facet of the artists multifaceted career. From his early years marked by classical influences to his revolutionary period of Cubism and beyond.

The walls are adorned with a kaleidoscope of colours, showcasing Picasso's mastery of various palettes and styles.

Sculptures punctuate the space, adding a tactile dimension to the visual feast.

The layout of the museum allows for an intimate exploration of each piece, and throughout my time in there, I was largely unaware of any other visitors, giving me a real sense of experiencing the art in private and allowing myself to fully absorb the sensation of being in the space.

Pablo Picasso, Chat accroupi [crouching cat]

Pablo Picasso,Cat Sculpture

The above sculpture of a cat was by far one of my favourite pieces in the collection. The cat is sitting in a little cubby around a corner. Looking for all the world as though he's been caught in some mischief and ready to pounce at a moments notice. I think because sculpture is such a foreign medium for me, I'm always in such awe of artists ability to infuse life into stone. So make something so rigid and inanimate, appear to possess the fluidity of movements feels like unimaginable skill and talent to me.

Pablo Picasso, 1917, Les Premiers Communiants

Leaving aside the works of his youth, Les Premiers Communiants (Paris, 1919), is one of Picasso's few paintings of religious subjects.

The treatment of the two figures with their heads bowed, initially appears realist. However, this is contradicted by several elements of composition. The children's oversized hands, the boy's cylindrical arm and his left leg, which is out of proportion to the rest of his body. This all displays deliberately exaggerated figures which were influenced by Picasso's discovery of classical monumental sculpture on his visits to Rome and Naples in 1917.

Pablo Picasso, Paris, 1924, Paul en Arlequin

Another notable artwork in the museum is, Paul en Arlequin (Paris, 1924). It is one of the most iconic portraits of Picasso's so-called neoclassical period. He painted quickly and left the background largely untouched. If you look closely, you can see that some details such as the boy's feet and the bottom of the chair are left barely sketched.

This leaves the viewer with a vibrant portrait of his first child with the dancer Olga Khokhlova. You can tell Picasso's affection for the boy by looking at his gentle eyes and the manner in which he awkwardly rests his hands in his lap.

In June 1930, Pablo Picasso acquired Château de Boisgeloup near Gisors in Normandy. He set up his sculpture studio in one of the outbuildings and embarked on an intensive phase of plaster sculpture work. A series of female figures, inspired by the features of his then partner Marie-Thérèse Walter, emerged from this new studio. The heads and busts, with increasingly prominent noses, spherical or hollowed almond-shaped eyes, protruding breasts and elongated neck, appear in infinite variations. A new dialogue between painting and sculpture, infused with playfulness and eroticism, was forged at this time. In the paintings, forms coalesce and break down freely, just like the sculptures of this period - as in Femme au fauteuil rouge

(1932) or Femme lançant une pierre (1931).

Pablo Picasso, 1930-31, Tête de Femme,

Pablo Picasso, 1932, Femme au Fauteuil Rouge

In the very many portraits of women that recur throughout his work, Pablo Picasso distorted and transformed the human body, breaking with conventional forms, displacing or altering organs and freezing, softening and flattening flesh. Each painting gave him an opportunity to start his endless explorations anew. This representational violence could be perceived by the viewer and was sometimes experienced by his sitters as a form of aggression. Nevertheless, these portraits of women reflect a range of different relationships between the artist and his model that cannot be simply reduced to creative cruelty. Gentleness, humour and fantasy are equally present in these works, alongside moments of terror and anguish, revealing an endless, sometimes disturbing quest for the truth that lies behind appearances.

Pablo Picasso, 1937, Portrait de Marie-Thérèse

Within a confined space demarcated by the straight lines of walls, floor and ceiling, the figure of Marie-Thérèse Walter is all curves and exuberant colours.

Historiography has often portrayed Marie-Thérèse as the polar opposite of Picasso's other companion of the time - Dora Maar.

Pablo Picasso, 1937, Portrait de Dora Maar

The gentle blonde versus tormented brunette - it remains the case though, that the artist's depictions of the two women have certain aspects in common, notably the gesture of the hand touching the cheek, which appears in many paintings from this period.

In recent years Picasso has fallen out of favour with a younger generation, shying away from the artist renowned for his cruel treatment of women and use of African artefacts. The conversation around viewing the past through the lens of the present is one that can be had many times. I've personally never been a particular fan of Picasso or his art, it doesn't move me in the way a painting by Kandinsky can. He was however, undeniably, one of the 20th century's most influential artists. And for that reason alone, a trip to the Picasso Museum in Paris is well worth the effort.