Nahmad Contemporary will mount an exhibition titled “Picasso | Painter and Model, Reflections by Naomi Campbell” next month at its exhibition space in Gstaad, Switzerland.
The exhibition, which runs February 14 March 15, focuses on Pablo Picasso’s late series “Le Peintre et son modèle” (The Painter and his model), and will feature 14 works produced between 1963 and 1965. Several of the works on view have been previously exhibited in Picasso exhibitions at major institutions like the Centre Pompidou, the Fondation Beyeler, the Museo Reina Sofía, and the Guggenheim Museum.
The works were made early in his marriage to his second wife Jacqueline Roque and begun a decade before his death in 1973. Roque is likely the stand-in for the nude model who is often one half of each painting’s composition.
“In these late works, Picasso turns the act of painting into a performance,” dealer Joe Nahmad said in a statement. “Le Peintre et son modèle series confronts desire, power, and mortality with an urgency that remains deeply contemporary. Naomi Campbell’s perspective offers a singular lens on this dynamic, expanding the conversation around the gaze and its implications in a way few voices can.”
The show will be accompanied with reflections by supermodel Naomi Campbell, who will offer up her own views on the artist-muse relationship as well as a “a meditation on aging, desire, and the fragile persistence of artistic authority,” per a release.
“I’ve lived most of my life in front of the camera, which gives me a singular perspective on the relationship between artist and model,” Campbell said in a statement. “It’s complex, layered, and charged with power. These paintings feel profoundly intimate. They speak to the tension between visibility and privacy, between possession and distance. They reveal how the gaze can both elevate and confine and how creation is often fueled by what remains just out of reach.”
She continued, “Seen through this lens, Le Peintre et son modèle series reminds us that the greatest power in the act of looking may belong not to the one who gazes, but to the one who remains, unmistakably, just beyond reach.”
