“In 1927, on a street in Paris, Picasso encountered the unassuming girl, just shy of eighteen years old, who would become his lover and one of modern art’s most famous muses,” according to Gagosian Gallery, which has mounted an exhibition that focuses on Marie-Thérèse Walter. “Flattered and curious, she agreed, and thus began a secret love affair that would establish Marie-Thérèse as the primary inspiration for Picasso’s most daring aesthetic experiments in the decade to come. To show Picasso’s work in a downtown contemporary art gallery creates a context that evokes the original challenges that his art presented in his own time while celebrating its enduring significance in our own.”

Picasso and Marie-Thérèse: L’amour fou runs through June 25 at Gagosian Gallery, 522 West 21st Street, between 10th and 11th avenues, 212-741-1717, gagosian.com.

Franklin Einspruch is an artist and writer.