With this exhibition, two names became interconnected: the artist Pablo Picasso’s and that of collector Peter Ludwig. The latter, as a young art historian, wrote his thesis on Picasso, quite unusual in post-war Germany.
The respect he felt for Picasso, manifested itself in his earnest passion for collecting, which during the past decades resulted in a collection containing 182 original works by Picasso, unparalleled worldwide, as well as playing a central role in the highly diversified and rich Ludwig Collection.
Ludwig Museum Budapest, opened in 1991, in Building “A” of the Budapest Royal Palace, is proud to house three exceptionally beautiful late paintings by Picasso (including Musketeer with a Sword, 1972).
The exhibition held at the Hungarian National Gallery – presenting this extraordinary collection in its entirety from the earliest piece from 1899, a portrait of his father, to the latest one Picasso painted in August 1972, a few months before his death – provided an opportunity for the visitors to encounter works that had never or seldom been displayed for the public.
The exhibition symbolically started on a tour in 1992 in Barcelona’s Picasso Museum, to be hosted subsequently by Ludwig Museum Cologne, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg, and the Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest. The last station of the tour was Museum der 20. Jahrhunderts, Vienna, in March 1994.