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Art review An awe-inspiring celebration of a raw, raging genius

The Guardian

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September 16, 2025

The Acrobat sums up the effect Pablo Picasso had on art in his 91 years on Earth.

Art review An awe-inspiring celebration of a raw, raging genius

In this 1930 painting, lent by the Musée Picasso in Paris, a body with no defined gender contorts into an insoluble puzzle, a leg sprouting above its anus, the head, eyes closed, bulging where genitals might be, the other leg standing on the ground balanced by an arm whose hand functions as a foot while the other arm, fist clenched, bends like a tail. In just this way, Picasso turned art inside out and upside down, twisted it unrecognisably yet made it all the more compelling, human and passionate.

Born into a Europe of realistic sculptures and perspective pictures, he blew up those conventions, put them back together, then smashed them again and a few times more. It's hard not to be awed by his achievements, his creative energy, the scale of his artistic breakthroughs, though Tate Modern tries its best.

Theatre Picasso starts with a clearing of the throat and references to gender and artistic borrowing. But those concerns go nowhere, vanishing in what becomes almost despite itself-a riotous celebration of his genius.

It breaks up Picasso as he broke up what he saw. There is no chronology or historical context.

A piece of film shot by Man Ray of Picasso in a wig as Carmen - filmed just after he had painted Guernica - is followed by a selection of much later "obscene" images.

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