Musée de l'Immigration

PARIS
MUSÉE DE L'IMMIGRATION
Picasso l'Étranger
November 4, 2021 - February 13, 2022

The Nahmad Collection is pleased to contribute to Picasso l'Étranger, an exhibition held at the Musée de l'Immigration in Paris, France.

Picasso is a national myth in France. His work has been part of the french heritage since the Picasso Museum's opening in 1985. Yet, it has not always been so. Few people know that he never became French. On April 3, 1940, he applied for naturalization, which was refused and never renewed.

As early as 1901, Picasso had been listed by the police by mistake as a "supervised anarchist." For forty years, he was seen with suspicion as a foreigner, a leftist, an avant-garde artist. Until 1949, although celebrated in the Western world, his work included only two paintings in the French collections. But his political acumen enabled him to navigate aplomb in a country of obsolete institutions. He settled forever in the South, choosing the South against the North, the craftsmen against the fine arts, the region against the capital.

As an illustrious global and foreign artist, he became a powerful vector for the country's modernization. Picasso, therefore, has its place in the National Museum of the History of Immigration.