Major Picasso exhibition opens in Romania’s Timișoara

The Picasso en visite exhibition opened at Art Encounters in Timișoara on September 17 and will run until January 17, 2027. Organized with the Picasso Museum in Antibes, it brings together 69 works by Pablo Picasso that have never previously been exhibited in Romania.

The selection includes paintings, drawings, engravings, lithographs, and ceramics linked to the artist’s time in Antibes and his fascination with the Mediterranean. It also features photographs by Michel Sima, who documented Picasso’s stay there.

The opening marks 80 years since Picasso first entered the Grimaldi Castle in Antibes on September 17, 1946. The museum’s director at the time, Romuald Dor de la Souchère, offered him a large room on the building’s second floor to use as a studio.

Over the following two months, Picasso created works depicting fauns, centaurs, nymphs, and fishermen alongside scenes inspired by daily life on the Mediterranean coast. He left 23 paintings and 44 drawings at the castle and donated another 78 ceramic works two years later.

The building was officially renamed the Picasso Museum in 1966, becoming the world’s first museum dedicated to the artist.

“Picasso developed a personal relationship with the museum in Antibes,” said Jean-Louis Andral, the museum’s director and curator of the Timișoara exhibition. “It was not only the first museum dedicated to his work but also a place that marked his biography.”

The Timișoara exhibition explores mythology and imaginary animals, the studio as a place of experimentation, muses and female figures, portraits, still lifes, and Mediterranean motifs.

It is the first exhibition hosted at Art Encounters’ new headquarters, which has museum-standard climate-control, security, and conservation systems designed to accommodate loans from international collections. The building also includes a space for young artists, an educational room for children, a library, an art bookshop, a café, and a garden.

“We believe Art Encounters is continuing its mission of bringing contemporary art closer to a diverse audience by organizing exhibitions that look towards foundational figures in 20th-century art history,” said foundation founder and president Ovidiu Șandor.

A five-language audio guide is available in Romanian, English, German, Hungarian, and Serbian. The exhibition is also accompanied by a Romanian-English catalogue and an educational programme for children, young people, and teachers.

Picasso en visite can be visited from Tuesday to Sunday between 10:00 and 20:00 at Art Encounters. Ticket and admission information is available on the Art Encounters ticketing