In the final act of its decades-long tenure at 980 Madison Avenue, Gagosian stages a resonant and unorthodox homage to Pablo Picasso. Titled Tête-à-tête, and curated in collaboration with the artist’s daughter, Paloma Picasso, this exhibition does not merely revisit Picasso’s legacy—it speaks with it, through it, and sometimes against it.
This is not a chronological journey. Instead, Tête-à-tête assembles more than fifty works—paintings, drawings, sculptures, and ceramics—from 1896 to 1972 into a series of bold, intimate encounters. The works are allowed to “speak to one another,” in the spirit of Picasso’s own self-curated 1932 retrospective. That historical reference is key: Tête-à-tête is both exhibition and echo.
“...Showing my father’s work as he wanted it to be seen, in conversation across subjects and periods, is a fitting tribute.”
— Paloma Picasso - Gagosian’s press release
“I was delighted when Larry suggested we work together,” Paloma Picasso said in Gagosian’s press release. “Showing my father’s work as he wanted it to be seen, in conversation across subjects and periods, is a fitting tribute.” Many of the works come from Paloma’s personal collection. Several have never been exhibited publicly, not even during Picasso’s lifetime.
One revelatory pairing places the 1909 Tête de Femme (Fernande), arguably the most defining Cubist sculpture of the 20th century, next to a glazed ceramic bust of Paloma’s mother, Françoise Gilot. “We’re letting the most significant sculpture of the century talk to something that looks like a cookie jar,” noted curator Michael Cary, without irony. This irreverence is entirely Picassian. Contradiction, confrontation, and seduction live side by side.
Other works speak to recurring muses: Marie-Thérèse, Dora Maar, Jacqueline. Each is rendered across decades in shifting styles and emotional registers. Gagosian’s installation reveals the artist’s long dialogue with his own imagery, the same subjects revisited, reformed, re-felt.
The exhibition also reflects Gagosian’s longstanding engagement with Picasso’s legacy, both artistic and market-driven. Since the 1990s, the gallery has staged over forty Picasso-related exhibitions, including more than a dozen curated by Cary since he joined in 2008. Gagosian’s reputation as a central player in Picasso’s secondary market is further underscored by landmark sales such as Bust of a Woman, which sold for $106 million in 2016.
What makes Tête-à-tête exceptional is not just the rarity of its loans, including twelve works never shown before, but the curatorial license granted to Paloma Picasso, whose relationship to the material is familial rather than institutional. There is a looseness and a freshness to the choices. Cary notes that Picasso “didn’t make a distinction” between periods and styles. The exhibition adopts that ethos and makes it palpable.
For Larry Gagosian, the exhibition is deeply personal. “I have been fortunate to present more than twenty exhibitions dedicated to Pablo Picasso,” he said. “It seems only fitting that a blockbuster show of the artist’s work should close out our time at 980 Madison.” Indeed, Tête-à-tête is both a grand finale and an intimate conversation. It is an exhibition that carries the weight of legacy but avoids the stiffness of reverence.
As the gallery prepares to vacate its historic Upper East Side space, this exhibition marks the end of an era. But it does so with the vitality and contradiction that defined Picasso himself: relentless reinvention, formal audacity, and above all, a hunger for dialogue. This is not a retrospective. It is a reanimation.
Femme au Béret Bleu Assise dans un Fauteuil Gris, Manches Rouges (Marie-Thérèse), 1937
Oil on canvas
39 3/8 x 31 1/2 inches (100 x 80 cm)
© 2025 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Photo: Sandra Pointet
Courtesy Gagosian
Femme au Vase de Houx (Marie-Thérèse), 1937
Oil and charcoal on canvas
28 3/4 x 23 5/8 inches (73 x 60 cm)
© 2025 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Photo: Sandra Pointet
Courtesy Gagosian
Portrait de Femme (Marie-Thérèse), 1936
Pencil, watercolor, and pastel on paper
13 3/8 x 10 1/8 inches (34 x 25.5 cm)
© 2025 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Photo: Sandra Pointet
Courtesy Gagosian
Portrait de Femme au Béret Rouge (Marie-Thérèse), 1937
Oil on canvas
13 3/4 x 10 5/8 inches (35 x 27 cm)
© 2025 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Photo: Sandra Pointet
Courtesy Gagosian
Tête de Femme (Fernande), 1909
Bronze
16 3/8 x 9 7/8 x 10 5/8 inches (41.5 x 25 x 27 cm)
© 2025 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Photo: Sandra Pointet
Courtesy Gagosian
Tête de femme bleu, 1948–49
Terra-cotta
14 5/8 x 9 1/2 x 11 7/8 inches (37 x 24 x 30 cm)
© 2025 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Photo: Sandra Pointet
Courtesy Gagosian
Tête Trois-Quarts Gauche, 1945
Oil on canvas
31 7/8 x 25 5/8 inches (81 x 65 cm)
© 2025 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Photo: Sandra Pointet
Courtesy Gagosian
Tête de Femme, 1957
Cut and painted sheet metal
32 3/8 x 13 x 18 1/8 inches (82 x 33 x 46 cm)
© 2025 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Photo: Sandra Pointet
Courtesy Gagosian
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