Picasso Show Opens in Abu Dhabi
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
A unique Picasso retrospective has gone on display in Abu Dhabi, bringing some of the Spanish artist’s favorite works to this Gulf city-state that aspires to become the region’s cultural capital.
The show was put together by Madrid’s Reina Sofia art museum, but many of the pieces come from the Picasso Museum in Paris. The Abu Dhabi collection includes 186 paintings, sculptures, and drawings by one of the 20th century’s defining artists.
The show that first went on display in Madrid in February included 400 pieces, but the traveling version that opened in Abu Dhabi on Monday, and which will visit nine cities around the world, has been downscaled. To make up for it, local sponsors in Abu Dhabi, the show’s only Middle East stop, have contributed 40 additional Picasso drawings, prints, and illuminated manuscripts, showing Arab influences on the young Spanish artist.
