The Museum of Cycladic Art is organizing a rare and original exhibition entitled Picasso and Antiquity. Line and Clay where ceramics and drawings by Picasso interact with ancient artefacts, as part of its Divine Dialogues exhibition series. Curated by Professor Nikolaos C. Stampolidis, Director of the Museum of Cycladic Art, and art historian Olivier Berggruen, the exhibition will last from 20 June to 20 October 2019.

Sixty-eight rare ceramics and drawings by Picasso, featuring birds, animals, sea creatures, humans, and mythological beasts (centaurs, the Minotaur) or inspired by ancient drama and comedies, converse thematically for the first time with sixty seven ancient works, creating another Divine Dialogue between Greek antiquity and modern art.

Picasso’s compositions—ceramics and drawings created between the 1920s and 1960s—come from foreign foundations, museums, and collections, including Fundación Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso para el Arte (FABA), Musée National Picasso – Paris, Musée Picasso Antibes, Museo Picasso Μálaga, Museum Berggruen (Berlin) and private collections. The antiquities come from 15 Greek museums and collections, namely the National Archaeological Museum, the Archaeological Museums of the Ancient Agora, Agios Nikolaos, Chania, Chora (Messenia), Delos, Eretria, Herakleion, Marathon, Paros, Patras, Thebes, the Museum of Cycladic Art, the Alpha Bank Numismatic Collection and the Cyprus Museum. They include sculptures, ceramics and bronze artefacts dating from Prehistory (from c. 3200 BC) to the Late Roman period (to the mid-third century AD).