Description
The Musée Picasso is the Paris museum of Pablo Picasso, in a 17th-century mansion in the Marais, on Rue de Thorigny. With more than 5,000 works, it is among the largest collections of his art in the world, from sketchbooks and ceramics to painting, sculpture and prints.
The building is a first sight: the Hôtel Salé, built in 1656–1659 for Pierre Aubert, a man who had grown rich collecting the salt tax, hence the "salted" mansion. Its sculpted decoration is by the brothers Marsy and Martin Desjardins.
The works are shown largely in chronological order, so you can follow Picasso's style through every period, with sculptures, paintings, drawings and prints alongside photographs, manuscripts and letters.
The museum has also made room for cartoonists who mocked Picasso's work in the 1950s. It also shows his own personal art collection: Cézanne, Renoir, Degas, Rousseau, Seurat, Matisse and more, plus African and Iberian pieces that inspired him.
This museum began with a tax bill. "I am the greatest collector of Picassos in the world," Picasso once said. When he died in 1973 he left a mountain of his own work, and his heirs had inheritance taxes to pay. They paid them in art.
A 1968 French law allowed it, for works important to the nation's heritage. The curator Dominique Bozo picked pieces from every period and technique, sculptures above all. A second donation followed after the death of Picasso's widow, Jacqueline, in 1986.
The mansion had been, in turn, the embassy of Venice, in 1671, and in 1815 a school, where Balzac studied. It was acquired by the City of Paris in 1964.
The architect Roland Simounet, chosen in 1976 from four proposals, restored its spacious interior for the museum. The mansion holds, besides the paintings, thousands of pieces from Picasso's own archive, among them his photographs.
The building is a first sight: the Hôtel Salé, built in 1656–1659 for Pierre Aubert, a man who had grown rich collecting the salt tax, hence the "salted" mansion. Its sculpted decoration is by the brothers Marsy and Martin Desjardins.
The works are shown largely in chronological order, so you can follow Picasso's style through every period, with sculptures, paintings, drawings and prints alongside photographs, manuscripts and letters.
The museum has also made room for cartoonists who mocked Picasso's work in the 1950s. It also shows his own personal art collection: Cézanne, Renoir, Degas, Rousseau, Seurat, Matisse and more, plus African and Iberian pieces that inspired him.
This museum began with a tax bill. "I am the greatest collector of Picassos in the world," Picasso once said. When he died in 1973 he left a mountain of his own work, and his heirs had inheritance taxes to pay. They paid them in art.
A 1968 French law allowed it, for works important to the nation's heritage. The curator Dominique Bozo picked pieces from every period and technique, sculptures above all. A second donation followed after the death of Picasso's widow, Jacqueline, in 1986.
The mansion had been, in turn, the embassy of Venice, in 1671, and in 1815 a school, where Balzac studied. It was acquired by the City of Paris in 1964.
The architect Roland Simounet, chosen in 1976 from four proposals, restored its spacious interior for the museum. The mansion holds, besides the paintings, thousands of pieces from Picasso's own archive, among them his photographs.