VENICE, ITALY.-Palazzo Grassi presents Picasso, la joie de vivre, 1945 – 1948, on view through March 11, 2007. Pablo Picasso’s life covered a span of 92 years (1881 - 1973), and his work fills almost 80 of these. Throughout his career, the artist always questioned himself, exploring themes and techniques that were ceaselessly renewed, and never contenting himself with copying his artistic experiences of the day before.

While certain periods of Picasso’s work are well-known to the public – the blue and pink periods, cubism, a return to order – others are less so, or at least have been overlooked for a long time. It is through the Picasso-Dora Maar, 1935-1945 exhibition, that the Musée Picasso in Paris recently and remarkably evoked the gloomy, dark period before and during the war, and Picasso’s fruitful artistic and sentimental liaison of the time.

The exhibition presented at Palazzo Grassi refers to the period immediately after this, the post-war years. During the occupation, movement between the occupied part of France and the unoccupied part was difficult, and only now was Picasso able to return to the Côte d’Azur. This period from 1945 to 1948, during which Picasso frequently stayed in Cannes, Golfe-Juan and Antibes, was marked by his liaison with Françoise Gilot, with whom he lived until 1953 and by whom he had two children, Claude and Paloma.

These years in the life and work of Picasso were happy ones. During this period, the artist explored the great mythological themes of the Mediterranean (nymphs, fauns…). The proximity of Vallauris and its pottery workshops resulted in his taking up the medium, exploring the use of new, atypical supports (asbestos cement, for example). It was during this period that Romuald Dor de la Souchère’s admiration would lead to him offering Picasso the possibility of working for two months (September-November 1946) in the vast hall of the château Grimaldi; he, who in Golfe-Juan lived in a tiny house which limited the format of his works. These two months at the château Grimaldi enabled Picasso to give free rein to his creativity. It was there that he made the masterpiece which gives its name to the exhibition: “La joie de vivre”. When he left château Grimaldi, Picasso left behind 23 paintings and 44 drawings which were to form the basis of an important collection for the town of Antibes, setting for the first “Picasso museum” (although it would only adopt this name in 1966).

With the Musée d’Antibes closed for works, Jean-Louis Andral, its chief curator, wished to have its collection travel. A part of the “Antibes Picassos” was thus presented at Malaga at the Picasso Museum (13th March - 11th June 2006), and this was to all extents and purposes the same as that shown at the Picasso Museum of Barcelona (6th July - 15th October 2006).

The Musée Picasso d’Antibes has agreed to shift virtually its entire collection of works by Pablo Picasso to Palazzo Grassi to enable it to present the La Joie de vivre exhibition. This exceptional loan has been joined by numerous other loans from public and private collections. The exhibition at Palazzo Grassi will thus provide comprehensive coverage of the “Antibes period”.

In order to enable visitors to ‘contextualise’ the work of Picasso during this period, the works of great photographers such as Denise Colomb have also been requested, bearing witness to the work and life of Picasso at that time, and those of Sima (Michel Smajewski), an artist of Polish origin, who has left some precious and powerful records of Picasso’s stay in Antibes.

Through almost 250 works, the Picasso La joie de vivre 1945-1948 exhibition offers a broad overview of this period in Picasso’s creativity. This exhibition also makes it possible to understand better the relationship tying Picasso and the Mediterranean. The exhibition also examines how Françoise Gilot, his companion at the time, influenced and inspired his work during this happy period. The period was that too of his mastery of pottery, which Picasso tried by chance when visiting Vallauris. Through their formal richness and innovative character, the works exhibited at Palazzo Grassi reveal Picasso’s capacity to go as far as possible with each of the techniques he explored. Finally, the testimony of Michel Sima, photographer and friend of Picasso, enlightens us as to how the master worked at Château Grimaldi in Antibes.