All in the family: two Picasso shows are staged in New York with help from his descendants

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This spring, two shows dedicated to Pablo Picasso are being staged a couple blocks away from each other on New York’s Upper East Side, both in collaboration with the artist’s family and featuring work never before displayed in public.

Picasso: Tête-à-tête at Gagosian (until 3 July) is presented in collaboration with Paloma Picasso, the artist’s daughter with the painter Françoise Gilot. She is the youngest of Picasso’s four children and the administrator of his Paris-based estate, after a years-long legal fight to be named a legitimate heir to his art empire. (Picasso and Gilot never married, and France did not grant children born out of wedlock the same inheritance rights as children born to married parents until 1972.) The gallery approached Paloma to collaborate on a show featuring work from her personal collection, she said in a statement.

The exhibition is not organised chronologically, instead introducing works with shared themes and forms across Picasso’s nearly eight-decade career, encouraging visitors to follow continuities in his practice. This style of curation aligns with how Picasso hung an exhibition of his own work during his lifetime, according to the gallery.

“Showing my father’s work as he wanted it to be seen—in conversation across subjects and periods—is a fitting tribute to his legacy,” Paloma Picasso says. “A number of the works we selected haven’t been seen since my father had them in his studio.” The 12 never-before-seen works include a touching sketch of an infant from 1921.

Picasso: Tête-à-tête will be Gagosian’s last show at its gargantuan, multi-floor space at 980 Madison Avenue. The gallery first leased a small office in the building in 1987, before gradually expanding to three of its floors. Now, Gagosian must move out to make way for Bloomberg Philanthropies.

“I have been fortunate to present more than 20 exhibitions dedicated to Pablo Picasso throughout my career, and it seems only fitting that a blockbuster show of the artist’s work should close out our time at 980 Madison,” the gallery’s founder, Larry Gagosian, said in a statement.

From daughter to grandson

Just two blocks north, another gallery with close ties to the Picasso family is presenting its own show of the artist’s work. The dealer Almine Rech is married to Bernard Ruiz-Picasso, a grandson of Picasso and his first wife, Olga Khokhlova. Most of the work in Pablo Picasso: Still Life (until 18 July) comes from Rech and Ruiz-Picasso’s foundation, with a focus on Picasso’s still-life compositions and their influence on the evolution of Cubism.

Still Life with Orange (1936) is in the exhibition at Almine Rech

“Still-lifes are a significant and important part of Picasso’s oeuvre that, to our knowledge, haven’t experienced a dedicated solo exhibition since maybe the Paul Rosenberg days,” Rech tells The Art Newspaper, referencing the legendary French dealer who represented Picasso.

The works on view are from 1908 to 1962, and more than 60% have never been displayed in public before the show, according to the gallery. The exhibition consists of mostly paintings with a handful of sculptures and several pieces of furniture Picasso had at home, including an armchair once owned by Khokhlova that appears in a portrait of her at the Musée Picasso in Paris.

“It seemed important to put forward this major theme that Picasso loved, as so many shows for years have focused on his portraits of women,” Rech says. “He also wanted to show the everyday objects he lived with.”