Picasso Passion 1953-1973-2023. When Italy learned to look at the world differently.

Organised in collaboration with the Spanish Consulate in Naples, the Spanish Embassy in Italy, the Cervantes Institute of Naples and the Campania Region, the exhibition Passion Picasso 1953-1273-2023. When Italy learned to look at the world differently will be held at the State Archive of Naples.

The exhibition will pay tribute to the great Spanish painter by tracing through correspondence, press articles, postcards, photographs and catalogues the great Italian retrospectives dedicated to him in 1953. The role of Eugenio Reale, an attentive and sensitive politician and intellectual, whose archives are preserved in the State Archives in Naples, was fundamental in the realisation of what can be defined to all intents and purposes as grandiose propagandistic manifestations. In fact, the relationship with Picasso had begun as a result of his affiliation to the French Communist Party and, through Reale, the PCI wanted to bring the star of the European art scene to Italy. While abroad Picasso's affirmation as the greatest interpreter of the twentieth century had already taken place, his relationship with Italy remained controversial until 1953.

Reale's proposal to organise in Rome the world's largest exhibition ever devoted to Picasso was welcomed by Palma Bucarelli as a unique and unavoidable opportunity for the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna and for culture in general.

The subsequent transfer of the exhibition to Milan, also characterised by a complicated process, was followed by Femanda Wittgens, who expanded the Roman exhibition by securing important new loans of works, including Guernica. 

The exhibition on Picasso in the splendidly restored rooms of the State Archive of Naples will focus on the imposing installations created in Rome and Milan, which will be recreated virtually through an immersive exhibition curated by the company Softec, allowing the viewer to immerse themselves in the controversies that generated them, at the same time as opening a window onto a decade rich in experiences and reflections that in many respects are still relevant today, in which the reconstruction of the country's cultural identity after the destruction of the war found a fundamental moment in the policies of public museums. 

The exhibition Picasso 1953-1273-2023 also includes the exhibition of documentary material belonging to the private collection of Senator Eugenio Reale, thanks to which it is possible to reconstruct the events of the organisation of the great Italian retrospectives of Picasso in 1953. Correspondence between political and cultural personalities, minutes of the scientific committees of our exhibitions, newspapers, magazines, accounting documents, iconographic and publicity material relating to the retrospectives will take the visitor into the Italy of the time, a time of fierce internal political struggle in which art was an ideological battlefield. 

Some of the material will come from the archives of the Galleria Nazionale di Arte Moderna in Rome, the venue of the anthological exhibition in May 1953, as well as from other private archives held in the State Archives in Naples, such as that of Paolo Ricci.