M+, Asia's first global museum of contemporary visual culture in the West Kowloon Cultural District in Hong Kong, proudly announces Picasso for Asia: A Conversation, a groundbreaking Special Exhibition featuring more than sixty masterpieces from the late 1890s to the early 1970s by Spanish artist Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) alongside works by Asian and Asian-diasporic artists selected from the M+ Collections. Co-curated by M+ and Musée national Picasso-Paris (MnPP), the exhibition will be co-presented with the French May Arts Festival.
Picasso for Asia: A Conversation will be held at M+ from 15 March to 13 July 2025. This exhibition is a significant milestone, as it marks the first instance in which masterpieces from the Musée national Picasso-Paris are being shown together with works from a museum collection in Asia. It will showcase Picasso's enduring influence and relevance by putting the master artist's works in dialogue with Asian contemporary artworks.
Picasso for Asia: A Conversation is co-curated by Doryun Chong, Deputy Director, Curatorial, and Chief Curator, M+, and François Dareau, Research Fellow, Musée national Picasso-Paris, supported by Hester Chan, Curator, Collections, M+. The exhibition adopts a new, unique perspective to interpret Picasso's legacy, exploring complex relationships between origin and reception, invention and adaptation, and West and non-West. More than sixty masterpieces by Picasso will be on loan from MnPP, which holds the largest and most significant repository of Picasso's works in the world. These will be in dialogue with around eighty works from the M+ Collections by more than twenty Asian and Asian-diasporic artists from the early twentieth century to the present.
The exhibition will be the first significant presentation of Picasso's works in Hong Kong in more than a decade and an unprecedented cross-cultural and intergenerational dialogue between the twentieth-century European master and contemporary Asian artists. Major works on view will include The Acrobat (L'Acrobate) (1930), Figures by the Sea (Figures au bord de la mer) (1931), Large Still Life with Pedestal Table (Grande nature morte au guéridon) (1931), Portrait of Dora Maar (Portrait de Dora Maar) (1937), and Massacre in Korea (Massacre en Corée) (1951) from the permanent collection of Musée national Picasso-Paris. Works by Asian and Asian-diasporic artists from the M+ Collections, including Luis Chan, Gu Dexin, Madokoro (Akutagawa) Saori, Isamu Noguchi, and Tanaami Keiichi, will be on display together with Picasso's oeuvre.
Suhanya Raffel, Museum Director, M+, says, "We are extremely proud to join hands with the Musée national Picasso-Paris to present a major exhibition based on the principle of shared dialogues. By considering Pablo Picasso's extraordinary work over the period of his life, this exhibition is built around a premise that museums working together can build new ways of seeing. Celebrating the practices of Asian artists by bringing Picasso's works into this conversation manifests M+'s unique role in creating multilayered dialogues around modern and contemporary art on a global level."
Cécile Debray, President, Musée national Picasso-Paris, says, "Born of an innovative and inclusive partnership with M+ based on a genuine exchange of knowledge, skills, and expertise, Picasso for Asia: A Conversation is a groundbreaking exhibition, proposing a new methodology and a bold narrative. Pablo Picasso may be the most famous artist in the history of modern art, but offering a circular look at his art, examined through the prism of a contemporary Asian perspective that decentres from the Western point of view, is an unprecedented proposal. It is a wonderful way to continue our work of expanding Picasso's audience and questioning his reception and artistic legacy."
Doryun Chong, Deputy Director, Curatorial, and Chief Curator, M+, and exhibition co-curator, says, "Picasso for Asia: A Conversation asks a series of fundamental questions. Why is Picasso still the world's most famous artist? Why are publics around the world drawn to and fascinated by his art more than fifty years after his death? What is the source of the enduring influence and legacy of his life and art? The exhibition will answer these questions that have far-reaching ramifications for understanding the history of modern and contemporary art and visual culture on a global scale, which is the core mission of M+."
More exhibition details and ticketing arrangements will be announced in due course.
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