Picasso Through the Lens: Exhibition in Rome Explores His Final Decades

A new photography exhibition at Palazzo Merulana in Rome, organized by Fondazione Cerasi and Coopculture, focuses on Pablo Picasso's last twenty years through the work of photographers André Villers and Edward Quinn. The show features about ninety photographs from the collection of Luxembourg lawyer Guy Ludovissy, part of a fund managed by the Reial Cercle Artistic de Barcelona. Villers and Quinn were both friends and collaborators of Picasso, capturing his life in the French Riviera between the 1950s and 1970s. The exhibition highlights Picasso's complex relationship with Italy, including his Ligurian surname origins, his early championing by critic Ardengo Soffici in 1911, and his 1917 trip to Rome with the Ballets Russes, where he designed sets and costumes for Parade. The photographs, displayed on two floors, document Picasso's self-mythologizing as a master of self-promotion, with Villers' more metaphysical style contrasting with Quinn's glamour photography. The exhibition runs until an unspecified date.