The Denver Art Museum will present its largest Picasso exhibition to date at the Hamilton Building in 2027. “Picasso: Magician” opens October 31, 2027, and runs through February 27, 2028, bringing together paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints and ceramics, according to Westword.
The Hamilton Building’s Design
The Denver Art Museum says Daniel Libeskind designed the Hamilton Building in collaboration with Denver-based Davis Partnership Architects, according to the Denver Art Museum.
Of the 150 works on view, 130 were made by Pablo Picasso himself, according to Westword. The show is organized in partnership with the Musée National Picasso-Paris and Manifesto Expo, and roughly 80 of the pieces will travel from the Paris museum, which holds the largest Picasso collection in the world. More than 30 additional works, mostly on paper, come from the Denver Art Museum's own holdings, with about a dozen more arriving from national and international collections in cities including New York and Dallas.
The Denver Art Museum has also added several Picasso works to its collection in preparation for the exhibition, according to the same Westword report. Christoph Heinrich, the museum’s Frederick and Jan Mayer Director and a co-curator, said the works were acquired specifically ahead of the show.
Denver’s Picasso Collection in the Spotlight
The exhibition's throughline is Picasso's decades-long fixation on the human body as subject matter, covering work created between 1881 and 1973. The show will chronicle 70 years of that exploration, tracking how Picasso's style shifted from a more realistic early approach toward the radical stylization associated with Cubism, as noted by Westword.
The Denver holdings will join works from Paris and other collections in a show spanning multiple media. The museum’s recent additions mean the exhibition will include works acquired with this presentation in mind, Westword reported.
Heinrich is co-curating the exhibition alongside Cécile Debray and Virginie Perdrisot, both representing the Musée National Picasso-Paris. The project has been roughly two years in the making, Westword reported., reflecting the scale of coordinating loans across continents for a show of this size.
A Focus on the Human Figure
For the Denver Art Museum, the exhibition also marks a chance to spotlight its own, lesser-seen Picasso holdings. Heinrich noted that the museum last presented a small selection of its own Picasso works on paper about 40 years ago, with nothing comparable shown since. That makes “Picasso: Magician” not just an import of international loans but also something of a homecoming for pieces that have sat largely out of public view for decades.
Heinrich described the human figure as a throughline in Picasso’s work and called him arguably the most influential artist of the 20th century, Westword reported.
