An exceptional selection of works of Pablo Picasso, spanning all periods and styles in the career of the 20th century’s signature artist, will be presented in Abu Dhabi in the first major Picasso exhibition ever mounted in the Middle East.

To be held from May 27 to September 4, the retrospective Picasso Abu Dhabi, Masterpieces from the Musée National Picasso, Paris will be shown in Gallery One of Emirates Palace under the patronage of Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces Shaikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
 
The exhibition is drawn exclusively from the singularly important holdings of the Musée National Picasso, Paris, which came directly from the artist’s studios.

A total of 183 works will be shown - including  paintings, sculptures and  works on paper - beginning with Picasso’s Blue Period Self-Portrait of 1901 and concluding with Portrait of the Young Painter (1972), made only months before his death.

Picasso Abu Dhabi, Masterpieces from the Musée National Picasso, Paris is an international touring exhibition which will visit nine nations, with Abu Dhabi being the second venue after the Madrid debut.

The exhibition is being presented in Abu Dhabi by Tourism Development & Investment Company (TDIC), the emirate’s leading cultural and tourism asset developer, and Mubadala, a wholly-owned investment and business development company of the Government of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi.

An exhibition feature exclusive to Abu Dhabi will be the inclusion of 40 drawings, prints and illuminated manuscripts that reveal, for the first time, Picasso’s development of a calligraphic poetry on the border between text and image. These 40 works are reminiscent of the Arab cultural influences that Picasso absorbed during his youth in Málaga.

The staging of the exhibition forms another component of a wide-reaching arts education programme being undertaken by Abu Dhabi ahead of the opening in the Arabian Gulf emirate of the world’s single largest concentration of premier cultural institutions.

Unprecedented in scale and scope, these facilities include the Shaikh Zayed National Museum, the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi Museum, the Louvre Abu Dhabi universal museum, a performing arts centre and a maritime museum.

All have been designed by international architectural luminaries including Lord Norman Foster for the Shaikh Zayed National Museum, Frank Gehry for the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi Museum, Jean Nouvel for the Louvre Abu Dhabi, Zaha Hadid for the performing arts centre and Tadao Ando for the maritime museum.
 
These  institutions will be built in the Cultural District of Saadiyat Island – a 27 square kilometre island offshore Abu Dhabi city which is being transformed by TDIC into a world class cultural, leisure and residential destination – and will be phased in from 2012-13. – TradeArabia News Service