Paul Smith celebrates Pablo Picasso with a new staging of the permanent collection of the Picasso Museum in Paris. Five years in the making and held to mark the 50th anniversary of the artist’s passing, Picasso Celebration: The Collection In A New Light! officially opened at the Paris institution on 7 March 2023.

Curated by the museum’s president Cécile Debray and head conservator Joanne Snrech, under the artistic direction of Paul Smith himself, the exhibition reinterprets Picasso’s masterpieces. Smith’s visual language, landmark wallpapers, and colourful backgrounds envelop Picasso’s sculptures and paintings in vibrant and cool presentations arranged by the designer. “Truthfully, l have little academic knowledge of Picasso, so the project is very much about visual and spontaneous associations,” he told Cécile Debray and Joanne Snrech in an interview for the exhibition catalogue. “I’m a very visual person, so it always come back to approaching things in a visual way.”

“The Musée Picasso generously gave me carte blanche to offer a new interpretation,” Paul Smith explains. “It’s a fantastic and very humbling opportunity.” The museum itself ­– which happens to be just around the corner from Paul Smith’s Paris HQ – has been a favourite of Paul’s for years and holds one of the most important collections of Picasso’s pieces in the world.

“Witty and uninhibited, Paul Smith proposes unusual juxtapositions and highlights unexpected details. Through his eyes, we rediscover a Picasso who was inventive, funny and perpetually experimenting,” Cécile Debray explains. “This lover of colour who is fascinated by the world of the spectacle and by everyday objects – a constant source of inspiration – he sees in the artist’s approach numerous echoes of his own relationship to things and images.”

Ultimately, it stages the works of Picasso as seen through Paul’s ever-curious eyes – “in a new light” as the title suggests ­– but not without a great deal of admiration and respect for Picasso. “The process was incredibly spontaneous, fast-paced, and instinctive. If Picasso had been alive today, I think he would’ve been curious about modern approaches to communication and presentation and that’s something I’ve tried to capture in the different rooms throughout the exhibition,” Paul Smith adds. “There is a humour and playfulness throughout while maintaining the upmost respect for Picasso’s unparalleled mind and work.”

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