This volume accompanies the exhibition curated by Clemente Marconi presented at the MANN from 5 April to 27 August 2023, marking the 50th anniversary of Picasso’s death.

The catalogue, like the exhibition, seeks to reconstruct the general climate of the artist’s visits to Naples and his encounter with a city whose traditions suggested inspirational motifs frequently found in his works. At the same time, it presents the MANN as it appeared at the time of Picasso’s visit, reconstructing the visual impressions that influenced him and establishing a direct dialogue between the antiquities and Picasso’s works.

The impact of the trip to Italy in 1917 on the artist’s work has long been known and recognised by many scholars. And on that trip, the same is true of the artist’s two stays in Naples, when he had the opportunity to visit both the Archaeological Museum and the excavations of Pompeii.
The artworks in Rome, Naples and Florence led to a decisive strengthening of Picasso’s tendency towards naturalism, expressed in explicitly classical forms, clearly recognisable in the vast majority of his non-Cubist paintings and drawings of the years from 1917 to 1925, his “second classical period”, and then in the classical graphic works from the thirties.

“”We are faced with the most refined dialogue ever composed between the drawings and works by the master and the statues and frescoes in the Farnese and Pompeian collections. No museum in the world could create such a symmetry. The exhibition reaffirms the absolute continuity of artistic thought made up of legacies and innovative reworkings.” (Paolo Giulierini, director of the MANN).