This exhibition tells the story of the friendship that the Hungarian photographer Juan Gyenes and the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso shared over two decades. Gyenes wrote that forming the relationship ‘seemed a three-act play: Act one, meet him, act two, photograph him, act three, show him the photographs’.¹ In fact, the three acts took place in 1953 during their first meeting, at La Galloise, Picasso’s home and studio in Vallauris.

They would meet another two times, in 1958 at his home in Cannes, Villa La Californie, and in 1961 in Mougins, at Mas Notre Dame de Vie.

It is at these three studios on the French Riviera that we invite you to visit Picasso through the lens of Gyenes. We invite you to visit him at home, reading or working in his studio, during his day-to-day private life, to walk among his paintings, sculptures, assemblages and ceramics, and to discover his organized chaos, with the acquiescence of the artist himself.

‘No camera sees all that I see, in every moment, with each step … each room is a painting.’² On hearing this reflection, Gyenes changes how he observes, focuses, watches, in order to photograph Picasso. He plays with the idea of the painting inside the painting: he puts a frame around the artist in these spaces, the works become the motif and the artist becomes the creative inspiration.

But Picasso knows ‘what he wants to be seen and not seen about him’³. It could be called a symbiosis. A graceful and alluring connection between equals, which benefited both of them creatively.

The Visiting Picasso exhibition brings together nineteen black and white photographs and one colour photograph. ‘You can never get tired of black and white’⁴, Gyenes used to say.

These images are windows into Picasso’s world between 1953 and 1961 and in the 1970s. To share a more personal view of Picasso’s private life, the photographer ‘loosens his perspective (of a portrait photographer) to pay more attention to emotion than to technique’⁵, telling the story of worlds of creation, exploration, discovery and apparent chaos.

The selection includes some fantastic portraits, such as one of Picasso holding a burning lighter, looking into the camera. Gyenes, in homage to the artist and as an almost metaphorical play on words christened the photo Fuego Eterno (eternal flame). In another, the artist is strolling (and posing) among the gifts for his eightieth birthday, the celebration of which he solemnly declared to be ‘his centenary’⁶.

The only colour photograph is the one showing Jaqueline Roque seated alone in the studio in Mougins ‘with the Picassos of her Picasso’⁷ but by that time without the man himself. The image from 1978 is part of what Gyenes called the ‘epilogue’ of his relationship with the artist, embodied in Picasso’s widow.

The exhibition is completed by reproductions of ten works relating to the selected photographs. A drawing of Picasso’s eyes from Museo Picasso Málaga is accompanied by the excellent 1906 portrait from Musée national Picasso-Paris. A cut-out paper violin, a landscape of the Bay of Cannes, the interior of Villa La Californie and the family portraits of his children and partners interact with the images and the settings that inspired them.

The educational approach to this exhibition conveys the importance of these two artists in the history of twentieth-century art; the vast oeuvre of Pablo Picasso, seen through the photographs of Juan Gyenes, and the personality expressed through the photographer’s vision in the private company of the artist.

The two shared a passion for what they did, and were able to convey that passion to each other. Gyenes made ‘admiring beauty a way of life’⁸ and Picasso dedicated his life to creation.

We encourage you to ‘see with your ears and hear with your eyes’⁹, to discover and visit places where magic happens, through the lens of Gyenes, who photographed Picasso.

With this exhibition, the Embassy of Spain in Hungary celebrates the importance of this Hungarian photographer — who later acquired Spanish nationality — not only during his lifetime but also in today’s artistic and cultural context. The Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID) has collaborated in organizing this event, with the aim of sharing with new generations the genius of Pablo Picasso, a little more than fifty years after his death.

Elena Aparicio

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¹ GYENES, J. ‘Retrato de Picasso’. Inaugural address as an Academic of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Saint Telmo in Málaga (Spain). Málaga, 1989. p. 1
² GYENES, J. ‘Dalí, Picasso, Miró’. Eudema. Madrid, 1990. p. 27
³ GARCÍA, N. ‘Cruce de miradas. Picasso en la fotografía de Gyenes’, from the catalogue of the exhibition
Gyenes. PICASSO: ‘¡FUEGO ETERNO!’ Collection of Fundación Pablo Ruiz Picasso (Casa Natal).

Málaga, 2012. p. 42
⁴ OLMEDA, F. ‘Gyenes’, from the catalogue of the exhibition Gyenes. PICASSO: ‘¡FUEGO ETERNO!’ Collection of Fundación Pablo Ruiz Picasso (Casa Natal). Málaga, 2012. p. 26

⁵ GARCÍA, N. op. cit. p. 41
⁶ OLANO, A. D. ‘Los ojos de Picasso, la cámara de Gyenes’, from the catalogue of the exhibition

Gyenes. PICASSO: ‘¡FUEGO ETERNO!’ Collection of Fundación Pablo Ruiz Picasso (Casa Natal).

Málaga, 2012. p. 50
⁷ GYENES, J. ‘Retratos de Picasso’. op. cit. p. 2
⁸ OLMEDA, F. ‘Gyenes. El fotógrafo del optimismo’ Península. Barcelona, 2011.
⁹ OLMEDA, F. ‘Gyenes. Maestro fotógrafo’. Catalogue of the exhibition at the National Library of Spain. Madrid, 2012.

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The exhibition 'Visiting Picasso. Juan Gyenes' shows nineteen original photographs in black and white and one in color, all of them belonging to the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID) Collection.

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