Pablo Picasso, La Pisseuse/Den kissande kvinnan, 16 april 1965. Centre Pompidou. © Succession Picasso/Bildupphovsrätt 2025. Foto: © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI, Dist. GrandPalaisRmn/image Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI
The latter part of Pablo Picasso’s career burns with restless intensity. The exhibition “Late Picasso” presents around fifty works created between 1963 and 1972 – works once overlooked but now recognized as a powerful premonition of future artistic expression.
By the 1960s, Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) had outlived most of his contemporaries and withdrawn from public life to devote himself entirely to his studio. Working with tireless energy, he often completed several canvases a day, revisiting themes from his past and from the broader European painting tradition. During these years, his art became less about breaking boundaries and more about deep, persistent exploration.
Pablo Picasso, Le joueur de cartes II (The Card Player II), 1971. Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, Denmark. Donation: The New Carlsberg Foundation, Photo: Poul Buchard / Brøndum & Co. © Succession Pablo Picasso / BONO, Oslo 2025
Pablo Picasso, Femme à l’oiseau/Woman with Bird, April 7 1971 (I). Fundación Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso. © Succession Picasso/Bildupphovsrätt 2025. Photo: Marc Domage © FABA
Pablo Picasso, Baigneur debout/Standing Swimmer, Mougins, August 14 1971. Fundación Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso, Madrid. © Succession Picasso/Bildupphovsrätt 2025. Photo: Marc Domage © FABA
Pablo Picasso, Tête à l’oiseau/Head with Bird, Mougins, May 8 1971 (II). Fundación Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso, Madrid. © Succession Picasso/Bildupphovsrätt 2025. Photo: Eric Baudouin © FABA
Pablo Picasso, Nu allongé/Utsträckt nakenmodell, Mougins, 7 september 1971. Private Collection. © Succession Picasso/Bildupphovsrätt 2025. Foto: Peter Schälchli, Zürich/Private Collection
Initially overlooked, Picasso’s late works gained new renewed significance in the 1980s. As painting re-emerged as a dominant medium, a younger generation of artists found inspiration in the expressive freedom of his final decade. Today, they are recognized not only as ground-breaking, but also as a powerful premonition of the artistic expression of later generations.
“Picasso’s late works are less concerned with resolution and more with urgency. They are marked by a self-aware theatricality, an embrace of fiction, and a refusal to be polished or conclusive.” –Jo Widoff, curator
Pablo Picasso, Le peintre et son modèle (The Painter and his Model), 25 October 1964. Foto: Peter Schälchli, Zürich. Private Collection. © Succession Picasso/Bildupphovsrätt 2025
Pablo Picasso, Homme et femme nus (Naked Man and Woman), 25 October 1965. Photo: Peter Schälchli, Zürich. Private Collection. © Succession Picasso/Bildupphovsrätt 2025
Pablo Picasso, Tête d’Homme (Head of a Man), 1969. © Succession Picasso/Bildupphovsrätt 2025. Photo: Rauno Träskelin. Private Collection
Pablo Picasso, Le déjeuner sur l’herbe (Luncheon on the Grass), 30 July 1961. Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, Denmark. Donation from The Louisiana Foundation. © Succession Picasso/Bildupphovsrätt 2025. Photo: Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Danmark
Pablo Picasso, Buste d’homme (Bust of a Man), Mougins, 15 May 1965 (II). Fundación Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso. © Succession Picasso / Bildupphovsrätt 2025. Photo: Hugard & Vanoverschelde © FABA
Late Picasso is the first major presentation of Pablo Picasso at Moderna Museet in more than thirty years. Here, the artist appears in his last years – from 1963 until his death in 1973. During these years, Picasso’s style became increasingly expressive and uncompromising. His late works combined two distinct ways of painting: one quick and simplified, made up of abbreviations and codified signs; the other bold and expressive, with thick, flowing paint hastily applied.
The exhibition brings together approximately fifty paintings and thirty works on paper. Alongside loans from other collections, the exhibition also features paintings and prints from Moderna Museet’s own holdings.
Pablo Picasso, Couple, Mougins, June 25 1971. Musée national Picasso-Paris. Jacqueline Picasso Gift in Lieu, 1990. MP1990-41. © Succession Picasso/Bildupphovsrätt 2025. Photo: Adrien Didierjean © GrandPalaisRmn (Musée national Pablo Picasso)
Pablo Picasso, Buste de femme/Kvinnobyst, Mougins, 11 juli 1971 (I). Fundación Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso. © Succession Picasso/Bildupphovsrätt 2025. Foto: Hugard & Vanoverschelde © FABA
Pablo Picasso, Caricature du général de Gaulle, et deux femmes (Caricature of General de Gaulle, and Two Women), 21–22 April 1968. The National Museum, Oslo. Photo: Therese Husby/Nasjonalmuseet. © Succession Picasso/Bildupphovsrätt 2025
Pablo Picasso, Écuyère, ”bonhomme” et ”mousquetaire” (Horsewoman, ”Little Fellow” and ”Musketeer”), 20 April 1968. The National Museum, Oslo. Photo: Therese Husby/Nasjonalmuseet. © Succession Picasso/Bildupphovsrätt 2025
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) was born in Málaga, Spain but lived most of his life in France. Over a career spanning more than seventy years, he produced a remarkable body of work across painting, sculpture, drawing, printmaking, and ceramics, constantly reinventing his style.
Since Picasso’s death in 1973, his legacy has remained both towering and complex – celebrated with near-mythic reverence and examined with increasing critical depth. A key moment in the posthumous reception of Picasso came with the influential 1981 exhibition A New Spirit in Painting at the Royal Academy in London, where Picasso’s works were shown alongside those of contemporary painters such as Georg Baselitz, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Anselm Kiefer. The exhibition marked a turning point in how Picasso’s late painting was understood – no longer as the work of a fading master, but as a vital precursor to the renewed energy and experimentation of the era.
Pablo Picasso, Installation view, Late Picasso. © Succession Picasso/Bildupphovsrätt 2025. Photo: My Matson/Moderna Museet
Pablo Picasso, Nu couché/Reclining Nude, 1967. Fundación Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso. La source/The Spring, 1921. © Succession Picasso/Bildupphovsrätt 2025. Photo: My Matson/Moderna Museet
Pablo Picasso, La femme aux yeux noirs (Dora Maar)/Woman with Black Eyes (Dora Maar), 1941. Homme à la pipe/Man With a Pipe, 1968. Courtesy of Masterworks. © Succession Picasso/Bildupphovsrätt 2025. Photo: My Matson/Moderna Museet
Pablo Picasso, Déjeuner sur l’herbe/Luncheon on the Grass, 1962. Moderna Museet. © Succession Picasso/Bildupphovsrätt 2025. Photo: Åsa Lundén/Moderna Museet
In more recent years, Picasso’s work has been revisited with greater nuance. As feminist and postcolonial critiques have reshaped the field of art history, scholars and artists alike scholars and artists began to have examined the personal and political dimensions of his work. Today Picasso stands less as an untouchable icon, and more as a figure through whom the complexities and contradictions of modern art are considered.
Late Picasso
November 22, 2025 – April 5, 2026 / Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden
Visit the website >
