Picasso the Foreigner presents more than 90 works by the artist, as well as documents, photographs, letters and videos, and opens up more reflections on the themes of welcome, immigration and the relationship with the other. Pablo Picasso, born in 1881 in Malaga, Spain, settled in Paris in 1904. Although France became his home and his fame grew beyond national borders, the artist never obtained French citizenship. Thanks to a multidisciplinary approach and extraordinary research in the archives of the French police, Annie Cohen-Solal, author of the first biography of Jean Paul Sartre and a student of Leo Castelli, brought to light papers that until now had been lying on shelves for decades.

«I found documents, prints and photographs that show how the police considered Picasso an alien and an outcast,»explains Annie Cohen-Solal, originally from Algiers and currently a professor at Bocconi University in Milan. «Throughout his life he was kept under surveillance for three reasons: he did not speak French and was treated as a foreigner; he was suspected of being an anarchist because he had hung out with some Catalans; and finally, as an avant-garde artist, he was rejected by the Academy of Fine Arts.»

Even when he was consecrated as one of the greatest living artists of his time, Pablo Picasso was not considered a true French citizen. The exhibition explores how the condition of being a foreigner influenced and formed his identity and, in turn, forces a reflection on contemporaneity.