The one-of-its-kind exhibition sourced 267 original masterpieces from private collectors around the world, and curated a journey into the artistic lives and works of two of the most important cultural icons – Pablo Picasso and Joan Miró. Sergio Gaddi, the man behind putting this spectacle together, talks us through the early life and beginnings of the two great artists, explaining that the Dubai narrative path of the restrospective crosses figures and themes, which characterised the graphic experience of both artists. “The exhibition is not just a journey, which tells a dialectic relationship between history and contemporaneity, but also a dialogue between the signs of tradition lived and interpreted by the artists, and the energies, which lighted up their creativity,” said Gaddi.
“We must kill modern art. It means, too, that we must kill ourselves if we want to go on accomplishing anything,”- Picasso
These words appear as we begin our journey from the first of five rooms chronologically split sections namely Inventors of New Languages, Jugglers of Form, Poets of Colour and Alchemists of Art. “Year after year, throughout the stages of an unparalleled career, Picasso pushed the horizons of art to ever new heights,” says Gaddi. “And Miro expressed pure poetry. These were men who participated intensely in their own time and in their own world, having the power to change it according to their wishes,” Gaddi says, as he describes the incredible journey of the father of cubism and his poet protégé through the years across the great depression, cubism, modernism and realism; pencil sketches that eventually, with age and experience turn into lithographs and colourful marvels of art. Bringing this collection for the very first time to Dubai marks a great step towards the art and cultural exposure of the region.
