The Museu Picasso of Barcelona presents Impressionist and Symbolist pieces from the Musée d’Orsay in Paris and the Musée national Picasso-Paris.

These works enable the public to fully appreciate the impact his first two visits to Paris had on the young Picasso.

The Museu Picasso, Barcelona is taking part in the exhibition Picasso. Bleu et rose at the Musée d’Orsay, which will run from 18 September 2018 until 6 January 2019, with an exceptional loan of artworks. To enable us to continue to offer a coherent visit to our permanent collection, the directors of the museums organizing the exhibition in Paris, Laurence des Cars (Musée d’Orsay) and Laurent Le Bon (Musée national Picasso-Paris), have facilitated the loan in exchange of nineteen works by a number of major artists, including Cézanne, Degas, Gauguin, Steinlen and Toulouse-Lautrec, within the framework of the very fruitful cooperation between our institutions.

The drawings, paintings and sculptures we are presenting engage in dialogue with the works in our collection, and in so doing allow us to show the decisive influence that the artists working in Paris in the early years of the 20th century exer- cised on the young Picasso’s stylistic evolution and his creation and consolidation of a language of his own. Clearly apparent here is his fascination with the avant-garde, as he begins – especially in the period between his first trip to Paris in October 1900 and his definitive move to live there in April 1904 – to forge his personal style and progress from a worldly painting to an art of a notably symbolic character.