Picasso's Final Years: A Reassessment

An article by Philippe Ducat revisits the critical reception of Pablo Picasso's late work, coinciding with the exhibition "Picasso 1969-1972. La fin du début" at the Musée Picasso in Antibes (April 8–July 2, 2023). Ducat argues that Picasso's final paintings, created between ages 88 and 91, were dismissed by critics and art professionals due to three factors: the rise of American abstraction and conceptual art, which positioned themselves against Picasso; the influence of Giovanni Papini's 1951 fictional interview "Visite à Picasso (ou la fin de l'art)" from *Le Livre noir*, which was widely mistaken as authentic and portrayed Picasso as a cynical public entertainer; and the subsequent instrumentalization of this fake by anti-communist and Soviet factions. Despite the initial rejection, Ducat contends that works like *Homme assis (Mardi gras)* (February 15, 1972) and *Femme à l'oreiller* (July 10, 1969) demonstrate Picasso's continued formal innovation, using techniques such as dilution, impasto, and distortion. The exhibition highlights that amateur visitors responded positively to the Avignon shows in 1970 and 1973, while professionals remained hostile. Ducat concludes by criticizing contemporary instrumentalizations of Picasso's biography that ignore the magnitude of his artistic achievement.