Pablo Picasso: A Painter Amidst Poets. Books from the Collection of Mark Bashmakov

The celebrated cycles of compositions for Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Balzac’s Le Chef-d'œuvre inconnu and Pierre Reverdy’s Le chant des morts are being presented on such a broad scale for the first time in the Hermitage. Displayed alongside them are other important works by Picasso – illustrations for Ilia Zdanevich’s Afat, Pindar’s Eighth Pythian Ode, Aristophanes’ Lysistrata and books by Jean Cocteau and Max Jacob. The exhibition also features a number of publications where Picasso’s contribution was limited to one or two compositions. Such small works cannot be classed as insignificant: at times a single engraving says as much about Picasso the illustrator – and, indeed, the artist in general – as an extensive series.

This event inaugurates a new programme of exhibitions devoted to books by 20th-century artists (livres d’artiste is the term customarily used for rare publications illustrated by prints created by outstanding painters and sculptors). This project represents a continuation of the museum’s long-standing collaboration with the well-known St Petersburg scholar and collector Mark Bashmakov. It has been conceived to operate in parallel with the permanent display of the Cabinet of the Artist's Book, which presents publications with illustrations by more than 20 different artists. While the display in the Cabinet gives a general panorama of the livre d’artiste from Bonnard to Dali, the new series of exhibitions is intended to focus on particular key names and publications.

The Picasso exhibition will be followed in the halls of the General Staff building by a display of the works of Surrealist artists in the realm of the book. Five exhibitions planned for 2019 and early 200 will present successively books by André Masson, Roberto Matta, Max Ernst, Joan Miro and Salvador Dali.

The exhibition curator is Mikhail Vitalyevich Balan, a researcher in the State Hermitage’s Department of Western European Fine Art.