Lucien Clergue: Twenty-Seven Encounters with Picasso

In 2016, the Museu Picasso in Barcelona acquired Lucien Clergue's collection of Picasso-related photographs. This exhibition comprises practically all the pictures purchased and displays them in narrative form: the photographic portrayal Clergue made of Picasso during their twenty-seven meetings held between 1953 and 1971 in the south of France, where they both lived.

Lucien Clergue (Arles, 1934 - Nimes, 2014) began to experiment in photography at a very early age. On 5 April 1953 he bumped into Picasso at a bullfight in Arles, and took advantage of the meeting to photograph him and show him other snapshots he had taken. Two years later the two men met again at La Californie, the artist's house in Cannes, an encounter that kindled a friendship only interrupted by Picasso's death in 1973. The twenty-seven meetings held during these years would be photographically documented by Clergue.

The exhibition presents the photographic diary that Clergue 'wrote' during the twenty-seven days he shared with Picasso, and is therefore a faithful account of their personal relationship and of small episodes in the artist's life seen from the point of view of his photographer friend.