Theatre Picasso at Tate Modern
Prodigy. Innovator. Provocateur. Lover. Genius. Arguably more than any other artist in history, Pablo Ruiz Picasso (1881-1973) self-mythologised and has become the subject of mythologisation. From his claim that the first word he uttered as an infant was pencil (or to be precise, “lapiz” in Spanish) to his last breath after imploring those present to drink for his health as he could no more, a dramatic narrative seems to have flowed through the modern master’s 91 years on Earth. Picasso was throughout his life drawn to the theatrical, be it on the stage of the Ballet Russes or the brutal dance of man and beast at a bull fight. The Tate Modern’s new exhibition has as its heart Picasso’s 1925 painting The Three Dancers, simultaneously celebrating the work’s centenary whilst marking 25 years since the Bankside behemoth’s opening. Uniting over 45 works, Theatre Picasso brings into sharp focus how aspects of performance shaped the Spaniard’s practice, as well as shedding light on how he cultivated his own persona.
The contemporary artist Wu Tsang and writer, curator and flamenco expert Enrique Fuenteblanca have worked alongside exhibition designer Lucie Rebeyrol to engender a sense of theatre into the exhibition’s layout: visitors are coaxed around exhibition walls painted black before a large curtain is pulled back to reveal a well-lit final room. One turns to be confronted by a stage and the realisation that we ourselves have been unintentional “players” or more aptly the support cast to the stars of the show, Picasso’s displayed works.
Theatricality is presented as a constant theme over the course of his long career, the artist finding inspiration in performers’ transformative abilities. A colour film by Man Ray at the very start of this exhibition shows Picasso himself getting in on the act, donning a mantilla that first registers as a blonde wig and puffing away on a pack of cigarettes as he imitates the eponymous heroine from the opera Carmen. This is from 1937, the year in which he painted Guernica. Later, one comes across the artist’s Weeping Woman, evoking the full trauma of that brutal civilian bombing raid on a face modelled on his lover of the time, Dora Maar. With the canvas painted in lively colours quite at odds with the overriding sense of horror in the cubist style, the woman’s eyes reveal the terrifying imprint of Nazi planes. This striking work was acquired by the Tate in 1988 from the family of Roland Penrose, a personal friend of Picasso and former director of the ICA who had bought the piece from the artist shortly after its completion.
At the press opening, Tate curators spoke of how Picasso approached the very act of painting as a dramatic act and there is certainly no shortage of evidence for this here. Portraits of the women in his life mark reveal his constant stylistic transformations alongside something of his “possessive tendencies” – the painting of his young lover Marie Therese Walter, Nude Woman in a Red Armchair (1932), sees him so captivated by her curvaceous form that he blends his own profile with Walter’s face, lips locked on hers. There is a huge contrast between that work and Woman in an Armchair No 1 (The Polish Cloak), the artist’s rather more serene 1949 lithograph, displayed opposite Francoise Gilot, described in a curator’s quip as: “The one that got away.”
Drama in all its forms is seen to pervade Picasso’s practice. One finds examples of his set designs and costumes for productions like Ballets Russes’ Parade, performed at Leicester Square’s The Empire in 1919, shown alongside a constantly returned-to theme, depictions of the bullfight. That triumph of humans over death, symbolised by the muscular foe, inspired him to create Bullfight Scene (1960), a rapidly rendered ink drawing of a horsebacked picador piercing the neck of a bull bowed in submission. Over the years, animals have been imbued with much symbolic value by Picasso. Featured is his white dove lithograph from 1949, which became an emblem of the peace movement. Violence rears its head once more in the Spaniard’s prints, The Dream and Lie of Franco 1937, as the artist unleashes his full satirical might on the fascist dictator for whom his hatred knew no bounds. Franco is depicted as a grotesque phallic monstrosity committing terrible acts of cruelty against his compatriots, a heroic bull variously interrupted as a symbol of the nation’s suffering and Picasso himself as a minotaur.
The star of the show, as far as the Tate is concerned, The Three Dancers, created at the height of the craze for jazz in Paris in 1925, has a kind of emotional violence of its own. Greatly admired by the Surrealists for the palpably erotic, frenzied gyrations of the female dancers, the painting is regarded as a revolutionary work. Originally, Picasso had set out, like Degas before him, to capture ballet dancers in training, only for his friend Ramon Pichot to die. Consequently, the distorted angularity of the figures and thickly applied paint attest to the artist’s response to that loss. Picasso indicated that the dark figure on the right, his silhouette-like profile beneath the central dancer’s arm, represented his departed old companion.
Before entering the darkened stage that draws upon the theatricality of Picasso the artist, one comes across 16 of the Spaniard’s works displayed on the kind of rack universally used by museums to store unexhibited pieces from their collections. For the purposes of the show, this section represents a backstage area. Featured is a comparatively discreet still life by Picasso, the first work of the legendary modernist ever acquired by the Tate. Close by is the delicate Girl in a Chemise (1905) from his Rose period. These could not be further removed from the erotic print works, produced in the autumn of his days, that are displayed in the same room. A parade of writhing women in various states of undress inhabit these highly sexualised images. Picasso’s much-discussed misogyny is not overlooked here, with curators raising the matter of the ageing artist becoming exposed to increasingly more sexually liberating times, largely through watching television. However, one might also perceive these images to be the product of the mind of a man battling against the tide of time and the inevitable decline of his own masculine potency.
Picasso’s sheer creative exuberance comes to the fore in the celebrated documentary The Mystery of Picasso (1956) projected onto a large screen at the dramatic epicentre of the exhibition. Using a stop-motion-like effect, director Henri-Georges Clouzot captures the charismatic modernist producing ink drawings and later oil paintings in real time. The artist entertains and enthrals in his role as a creative magician, playing to the crowd. Theatre Picasso attests to the inspiration that Picasso found in a multiplicity of performers, from flamenco dancers to bullfighters. Throughout his long career, this rich array of characters was repeatedly turned to as the ever-productive Spaniard sought to give concrete form to his ideas. The exhibition concludes with a final theatrical flourish from an old friend of this giant of 20th-century art, the circus. Generously lent by the Musée Picasso in Paris, Picasso’s 1930 painting, The Acrobat, sees the artist throwing the concept of human depiction on its head. Possessing an impossibly contorted form of indistinct gender, the figure lacks a torso, consisting of nothing but a head and limbs. True to his reputation, Picasso is found challenging our expectations of societal norms and representations of reality –ever the consummate performer.
James White
Photos: Succession Picasso / DACS 2024
Theatre Picasso is at Tate Modern from 17th September 2025 until 12th April 2026. For further information or to book, visit the exhibition’s website here.
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