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A new Picasso exhibition in Rome, including female nudes, triumphs of colour, and citations by Neruda


The Rhinoceros Gallery in Rome hosts the exhibition Picasso, arriving with a painting never exhibited in the capital. This exhibition takes you on a path that combines dance and music along with the beautiful countries of Spain and France.

Picasso at the centre of monumental Rome

Preparations continue in view of the 50th anniversary of the death of Pablo Picasso, one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century. The Alda Fendi – Experiments foundation, after the successful exhibition of the painting Young Woman received on loan from St. Petersburg, has inaugurated at the Rhinoceros Gallery until 16 October 2022 the Picasso exhibition, where the attention is focused on a painting that has never been exhibited in the capital titled Le peintre et son modèle en plein air.

The complicity between the artist and the painting

The oil on canvas painting depicts a nude female, portrayed outdoors; the result of the reflections carried out by Picasso between 1960 and 1961 around the painting Déjeuner sur l’herbe by Manet. The painter’s attention focuses especially on the seated female and on the man who observes her, in a dialogue of complicity and seduction. The background is typical of the late Picasso paintings, reduced only to shades of green and blue. The theme is the meeting point between a reflection on the painter’s profession, in dialogue with the history of art, and the representation of the naked female.

The friendship with Neruda and the passion for bullfighting

The exhibition, curated by Raffaele Curi, is spread over all the floors of the building, and gives life to a real theatrical installation in which music and dance, including the famous Pulcinella dance, evoke the Picasso universe, ideally divided between Spain and France. Video projections and multimedia contributions follow one after the other and, in closing, thus recalling the great friendship between the two artists – a written quote from the poet Pablo Neruda: Like summer in a golden church.

Another important space is attributed to bullfighting, of which Picasso loved the colour (gold and folklore), and the great friendships that tied him to the most important toreadors of his time, such as El Cordobés and Manolete, and especially Luis Miguel Dominguín and his family: Lucia Bosé and their children Lucia, Paola, and Miguel Bosé.