"Picasso eats everything and apparently we are still hungry," Olivier Widmaier-Picasso, his grandson, told AFP. He says he is "fascinated by the number of museum curators, historians and researchers who continue to find angles of study."

The ceramics of Picasso, Picasso and feminism, white in Picasso, Picasso under the eye of famous photographers, the young Picasso in Paris, Picasso sculptor... The monument is combined with all sauces as part of "his year", celebrated in France and Spain.

He remains "above all," says Bernard Blistène, former director of the National Museum of Modern Art at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, praise, like other specialists, unanimous, the "genius" of the father of "Guernica" and "Demoiselles d'Avignon".

Pablo Picasso © Cléa PÉCULIER / AFP

"The devastating power of Picasso's work compared to that of others, the permanent invention, the crossing of all the great currents of modernity, the experimentation for more than 80 years (Picasso painted until his death at 91, editor's note), the desire to please and displease... All this is unmatched," he told AFP.

And after hundreds of exhibitions dedicated to him, he remains an "inexhaustible" museum resource, adds Emmanuel Guigon, director of the Picasso Museum in Barcelona.

With the #MeToo movement, however, the image of this monument of painting has been tarnished by accusations of misogyny and violence against his former companions.

Spanish painter Pablo Picasso in February 1968 © - / AFP/Archives

Former curator of the Picasso Museum, Emilie Bouvard hopes that this anniversary will mark "the beginning of a salutary process" on the way we approach this "popular" artist, who "embodied a commitment that we continue to talk about and presented himself as a man close to everyone and who was".

"Open up to debates"

"#MeToo is a kick in the anthill that has good," she said.

"We need to stop talking about the women who have gone through her life as +muses+. Some committed suicide, others went mad. The only one who made it out was Françoise Gilot, the only one to have left it," she adds.

Pablo Picasso and Françoise Gilot in November 1948 in Paris © - / AFP/Archives

A painter now based in the United States, she described Picasso as a "tyrannical, superstitious and selfish being", in a bestselling book "Living with Picasso", published in 1964.

"Beyond his machismo, Picasso is someone who appropriated things, beings, possessed them with paroxysmal feelings of suffering, pain. He was interested in the archaic questions of the self and the related violence with a certain courage, but he made those around him drool. To approach this question is to speak differently but accurately of Picasso," Bouvard continues.

"Violence" and "sexuality in art" are themes addressed during a series of conferences in Paris, while an exhibition on Picasso and feminism will open in June at the Brooklyn Museum in New York, curated by actress Hannah Gadsby, particularly virulent against Picasso in a successful show on Netflix.

Less controversial and more festive, in Paris, the museum that bears his name has been transformed by the British designer Paul Smith.

Picasso Museum director Cécile Debray and British fashion designer Paul Smith on March 3, 2022 in Paris © STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN / AFP/Archives

"A bet" for the director of the museum, Cécile Debray, whose institution manages the commemorations in France and which "is not intended to be a mausoleum".

On the contrary, the objective is to "open up to debates and reflection on Picasso in order to reread the work and show its vitality," she says.

In addition to the exhibitions, many conferences are planned this year, as well as the inauguration in autumn in Paris of a research center, close to the Picasso Museum, and an international symposium at the same time at Unesco.

© 2023 AFP