Foreword by Nicolas Sarkozy to the catalog of the exhibition "Picasso and the old masters"

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Meeting the great artist with the old masters of painting - a major cultural event. Exhibition "Picasso and the old masters, organized by the Association of National Museums, the Louvre, Musee d'Orsay, the National Picasso Museum and National Gallery, London, for the first time can witness the creative roots of the most significant artist in the art of the twentieth century.

Not immediately Pablo Picasso was a brilliant artist, not just the history of art has enriched it with their powerful creativity. At first it was a hard-working student, in love with the works of masters, which he opened for himself, visiting museums Prado and the Louvre. Sculptors of the Hellenistic Greece and Ancient Rome, the French and Spanish painters of the classical school, the Impressionists - this is the young learned the art of Pablo Ruiz Picasso, before he became a brilliant artist.

Picasso was the heir of classical art, he strove for harmony and perfection of form, but only after Cubism broke decisively with tradition, he became a real maestro. Anyone who liked to present himself Minotaur, symbolizing the unbridled force of myth, he studied the art of Velazquez, El Greco, Goya, Poussin, Delacroix, Ingres, Corot, Manet, Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec, Gauguin, Cezanne, Courbet, to deconstruct and then in new interpretation of their work. Getting Started with the masters - only the first step towards the creation, the beginning of a fruitful and continuous dialogue.

Picasso was a companion of his age. For him, tradition was in step with the revolution. In different periods of his work rhythmically displaced each other and constantly updated. Not only the style of Picasso's constantly changing, but he was creating (or recreating) pictures, working as the old masters - with the same gestures, using the same tools, paint and canvas, as well as brilliantly solving tasks. A descendant of ancient Greece and classical Europe was also a descendant of Africa. Culture and civilization are mixed in the works of Picasso throughout his life. His work - is both cross-breeding, modernism and eternity. He recreated the plastic world.

Sometimes brutal, always brilliant, does not fit into the usual framework of artistic tradition, Picasso put all his power and strength of each motif in each subject. The genius of the artist overcame the temporal and spatial boundaries.

Picasso was the epitome of a revolutionary century, and yet he was perfectly blended in a number of old masters, who have always been the object of his love and admiration.

In 1956, the director Henri-Georges Clouzot shot the documentary "The Mystery of Picasso". Today is an excellent exhibition at the Grand Palais helps us better understand this mystery.

NICOLAS SARKOZY

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