Picasso. Blue and Rose, the exhibition at Paris Musée d’Orsay: pictures

While the Musée Picasso will present Pablo Picasso’s masterpieces, the Musée d’Orsay – from September 18, 2018 to January 6, 2019 – will present a focus on the blue and rose periods of the Spanish genius through a wonderful exhibition.

By the way, this exhibition is the result of a collaboration between the Musée d’Orsay and the Musée Picasso and will gather as many masterpieces as possible for an exhaustive presentation of the artist’s sculpted and engraved production between 1900 and 1906.

These 6 years have been vital in Picasso’s art. He’s still young when, in 1901, his friend Carlos Casagemas commits suicide. Pablo Picasso was only 21 and becomes aware of the violence of the existence.

He will paint old men, beggars, blind people in cold and often blue-ish colors. In the winter 1901, he paints Self Portrait in Blue Period (Paris, Musée Picasso). Pablo Picasso lives in Paris and for financial issues he reuses canvases for paintings and will burn his drawings to warm up!

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In 1904, he settles in Bateau-Lavoir, the studio left by Paco Durrio and meets his first wife: Fernande Olivier. His romantic idyll changes his favorite themes. From death he moves on to love and zest for life while maintaining a certain melancholia we can find in Arlequin.

The rose period will last 2 years, and ends with the Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, the first painting of the cubist period!

Beyond belief, this crucial period of his career as an artist has never been concerned as a whole by a French museum. In the Musée d’Orsay, his production will be placed in its context and put in perspective with the work of his Spanish and French contemporaries (Casas, Nonell, Casagemas as well as Steinlen, Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec and Gauguin)!

Please note that it's been over 4 years since our last visit, so the place and experience may have changed.