Picasso: Masterpieces from the Musée National Picasso, Paris is curated by Anne Baldassari, chairman and chief curator of collections of the Musée National Picasso, Paris. Elizabeth Smith, the AGO’s executive director of curatorial affairs, will oversee the exhibition’s installation at the AGO. The exhibition is co-organized by the Musée National Picasso, Paris and the Art Gallery of Ontario.

Picasso: Masterpieces from the Musée National Picasso, Paris is generously supported by Lead Sponsor BMO Financial Group. Additional support is provided by Air Canada, Official Airline for the exhibition. I highly recommended the 296-page catalogue that has been produced to accompany the exhibit and includes 194 illustrations. The catalogue is edited by Anne Baldassari. One of my favourite books is the biography and best seller ‘Life With Picasso’ (1964) by his lover, model and mother of his 2 children, Francoise Gilot. There is also a documentary 13 Days In The Life of Picasso (1999) and a movie Surviving Picasso (1996).

“Francoise Gilot met Picasso during the German occupation of Paris, she was twenty-one, he was sixty-two. For nearly a decade, Gilot shared her life with this giant of the art world, giving birth to two of his children, working as his model, and sharing his world. This uniquely candid and vivid memoir takes readers behind the Piccasso legend to meet the man.”

Movies and documentaries about Picasso:

13 Days In The Life of Picasso (1999).

Focusing in on 13 key events in Picasso’s life, this meticulously researched documentary begins with the artist as a child prodigy, studying at the knee of his father, himself a renowned drawing instructor. However, the teenaged Picasso chose to forgo a stable career in academia in favor of the more precarious existence of a studio painter; a shrewd choice, since, at the age of 16, he created his first masterpiece: “Science and Charity.” As the filmmakers deconstruct Picasso’s canvasses, the viewer sees how style and subject were shaped by tragedies in his life. Devastated by the suicide of a friend, he pictured the funeral as a parody of El Greco. Championed by Gert… TVGuide.com

13 Days in the Life of Picasso explores the defining moments of the creator of some of the greatest works of the 20th century, including the suicide of his friend Carlos Casajemas and the bombing of the Basque town of Guernica. www.amazon.com