The Perpignan museum is now welcoming a brand-new exhibition offering a comparative reading of the work of Aristide Maillol (1861–1944) and Pablo Picasso (1881–1973), a parallel still too rarely explored. Yet the two men share a deep connection with the city of Perpignan and its history: in 1909, Maillol donated one of the original bronzes of Mediterranean (1902–1905) to the city, while between 1953 and 1955, Picasso stayed at the Hôtel de Lazerme, which now houses the Hyacinthe Rigaud Art Museum. The exhibition aims to shed light on the subtle correspondences, shared themes and mutual influences of the two masters through a rich display of 110 works — sculptures, paintings, drawings, engravings — presented across a 400 m² scenographic space. Let us now explore the various themes presented by the Musée Hyacinthe Rigaud.

Face to Face

“If I were to buy a Picasso, it would be one of those paintings, rather than his figures […] I like rich art, flourishing art. What I prefer are his squares. That’s neither rich nor poor.”

– From Henri Frère, Conversations with Maillol, 1956

Although Maillol and Picasso had already crossed paths in Paris, the encounter at the heart of this exhibition is, in fact, posthumous. It takes place between 1953 and 1955, when Picasso regularly stays in Perpignan, at the home of Jacques and Paule de Lazerme. During these visits, the artist reconnects with his Catalan roots and rediscovers Maillol’s work, whose sculptures are prominently displayed in the city’s public spaces.

Faced with this sculptural presence, Picasso gradually returns to a classical aesthetic that he had already explored between 1920 and 1934, particularly through the theme of the “Large Bathers” and the Vollard Suite, a series of etchings. The tangible proximity of Maillol’s works brings to life a symbolic meeting between the two artists. This is already evident in a drawing Picasso dedicated to his host, Jacques de Lazerme, in September 1954, depicting two nude women bathing. One can feel the influence of Maillol’s work in the poses of these women, echoing the almost architectural stances so characteristic of the sculptor from Banyuls.

During his stay in Perpignan, Picasso asked Raymond Fabre to photograph Maillol’s sculptures. He wanted to preserve a record of the visit, which Fabre completed on 24 September 1954, the day before Picasso left for Vallauris. On that day, Picasso was photographed in front of two of Maillol’s major works: Mediterranean (1905) and Venus (1928), briefly isolating himself to confront their sculptural power.

Maillol’s influence, deeply felt during Picasso’s Perpignan stays, quickly began to manifest in his own work. From 1956, the theme of the bather returned powerfully to his pictorial repertoire. The large painting Women by the Sea (1956) embodies this new phase, marking a shift toward a Mediterranean aesthetic with sculptural forms. It attests to the direct link between Picasso’s Catalan experience and Maillol’s plastic legacy. The following year, with Bathers at La Garoupe (1957), Picasso continues this process of transformation. In both works, we see a transition from Maillol’s full and balanced forms to a radical geometrization of the female body. The figures flatten, lose their materiality, and their relation to space once again disrupts the classical codes of sculpture. This approach reflects a shared quest between the two artists: the search for a renewed formal balance, defying the laws of gravity.

Thus, through these late works, Picasso does not imitate Maillol but engages in a formal and emotional dialogue with him. He absorbs the sculptor’s lessons while pursuing his own path. In this convergence, a whole facet of modern Mediterranean art comes to light, rooted in a lineage that is as subtle as it is fertile.

Catalan Artists

The Perpignan exhibition also focuses on the common origins of the two artists. Although their artistic paths differ profoundly, Aristide Maillol and Pablo Picasso share a common foundation: Catalonia. On both sides of the Pyrenees, this land marked by a strong identity—divided between France and Spain since the 17th century—constitutes a lasting source of inspiration for both artists.

Born in Banyuls-sur-Mer, Maillol maintained throughout his life an unbreakable bond with his native village, to which he frequently returned to recharge and escape the turmoil of the capital. Picasso, twenty years younger, grew up in Barcelona, where he settled at the age of fourteen.

Their first meeting, between 1902 and 1903, was filled with emotion when Picasso, in greeting Maillol, sang a Catalan folk song, thus affirming their shared cultural heritage beyond national borders.

In 1906, during a stay in Gósol in the Catalan Pyrenees, Picasso immersed himself in and drew inspiration from local life. There, he found a rural simplicity comparable to that celebrated by Maillol in his works. His sketchbooks—known as the Catalan notebooks—feature everyday figures, women in traditional headwear, and men wearing the barretina. These scenes reappear in his work, notably in representations of his companion Fernande, including the statuette Head of a Woman, known as Fernande (1906). His exploration of Catalan culture continued throughout his life, including in his 1934 engravings The Catalan Drinkers and in his famous 1954 portrait by Raymond Fabre, where the artist is shown wearing a Catalan cap.

In contrast, Maillol demonstrated his attachment to his native land through an œuvre deeply rooted in Mediterranean traditions and spirit. The sculptor celebrated simplicity, balance, and a certain sense of permanence. His Head of a Catalan Woman, modeled around 1898, is a significant milestone: it combines regional identity with formal research. This work marks the beginning of a sculptural language in which Catalanness, first perceptible in external signs, gradually becomes distilled in the form itself—nude, full, almost archaic bodies that transcend the local to reach a universal aesthetic.

Forming and Deforming the Human Figure

In both Maillol’s and Picasso’s work, special attention is given to spatial composition. Each demonstrates a comparable virtuosity: for example, Maillol’s relief Desire (1907) reveals a mastery equivalent to that shown by Picasso in his painting Two Women Running on the Beach (1921). The massive bodies in the latter echo those depicted by Maillol in The Wave (1891–1898). Elsewhere, figures seem to falter, as if about to lose their balance—but balance is always retained. From Maillol’s The River (1943) and Air (1938) to Picasso’s Reclining Nude (1932), the forms gently slide toward deformation, chaos, or even abstraction, without ever completely succumbing. Yet the mannerist elongation of Air contrasts sharply with Picasso’s rounded forms.

For both artists, the position of man—humanism—is central to the composition, yet is confronted with what threatens, transcends, or subverts it. Natural elements—sea, sun, wind—as well as desire, sensuality, violence, sleep, or dreams, challenge human stability. They invert its verticality, bring it down to the ground, provoke falls, slips, duplications, or confusions. Silhouettes, lines of force, limb arrangements, and postures are all put to the test, sometimes pushed to disorder and dislocation. This crisis of unity is expressed through fragmentation, explosion, and body deformation.

Too often, we forget that beneath the apparent serenity of Maillol’s work lie deep tensions. Picasso, for his part, perceived them clearly—no doubt because he had wrestled with them himself in his own artistic journey.

This comparison becomes even more striking when Picasso’s embrace scenes from the Vollard Suite are placed alongside Maillol’s relief Desire (1907). Whereas Picasso entangles bodies in near-chaotic confusion, Maillol inserts the intensity of desire within a strictly ordered framework: a perfect square that encloses the human figure. The underlying forces are clear: the man’s arm around the woman’s waist (countered by her defensive gesture) forms the relief’s diameter; the hand on her shoulder, the breast, and the aligned knees define a central vertical axis. The whole divides into four squares: above, the opposing lines of the male back and female torso form dynamic diagonals; below, crossed or parallel legs form the lower squares’ bases and diagonals.

Maillol thus introduces order into disorder, formal stillness within intense movement. His sculpture borrows from architectural language, where composition and form take precedence over subject, which recedes into the background: “I was happy to find an idea that allowed me to give meaning to these masses; but when I began, I wasn’t thinking of a man and a woman.” It is precisely this constructive approach that opens the path to future abstraction in Maillol’s sculpture.

Museum for a Small City (1943)

Finally, one of the exhibition’s major themes lies in a unique reinterpretation of Maillol’s work through the visionary gaze of architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. In 1943, at the height of the Second World War, Mies was invited by Architectural Forum magazine to design a theoretical project: Museum for a Small City. Rather than a traditional museum, he imagined an open, fluid space designed as a place of pleasure rather than a static institution. He rejected the idea of the museum as a place of artistic “confinement,” instead advocating freedom of movement, closeness to the works, and the absence of historical hierarchy between them.

In this context, the selection of artworks associated with Mies’s project is deeply meaningful. He notably chose Picasso’s Guernica (1937) and Maillol’s Night (1906–1909), both marked by dramatic tension. Alongside them, Maillol’s Bound Action (1907) embodies a powerful message of freedom and social revolt. Mies’s gaze reveals an unexpected link between the two artists: beyond their often-highlighted aesthetic differences, their works share expressive intensity and a common political force.

This dialogue reveals a modernity in Maillol’s work that is not always readily associated with it. Opposite Picasso’s plastic force, his sculpture appears in a new light—as a classical œuvre imbued with contemporary strength. Mies van der Rohe’s approach, by abolishing stylistic and temporal boundaries, allows us to revisit the relationship between the two artists, highlighting their resonances rather than their divergences.

The exhibition Maillol–Picasso. Challenging the Classical Ideal offers far more than a simple confrontation between two major figures of modern art: it invites us to reconsider, in a new light, works too often confined to rigid interpretations. By bringing Maillol and Picasso together, it reveals the extent to which their respective research—though formally distinct—share a common inquiry into the body, form, balance, and elemental power.

This unprecedented tête-à-tête particularly encourages a re-evaluation of Maillol’s sculpture, often perceived as classical, whose modernity emerges with renewed force when juxtaposed with Picasso’s bold plastic explorations. The contrast between calm curves and dynamic imbalances highlights Maillol’s originality—not as a sculptor trapped in tradition, but as an artist engaged with the aesthetic upheavals of his time.

The strength of this exhibition also lies in the exceptional quality of the assembled works: nearly 120 pieces, including some exhibited for the first time in Perpignan, such as The River and Air, and others from the collections of the Musée Hyacinthe Rigaud. In addition to the museum’s holdings, notable loans come from institutions such as the Musée d’Orsay, Musée de l’Orangerie, Petit Palais, Musée Rodin, Fondation Dina Vierny, Berlin’s Nationalgalerie, and the Oskar Reinhart Collection in Winterthur. The Centre Pompidou, a central partner, notably contributed with the loan of Picasso’s Women by the Sea (1956), a major painting shown alongside Mediterranean, reinforcing the intensity of the dialogue between the two artists.

Structured into six sections with deliberately ambiguous titles – Classical? Reversed? Primitive? Sculptor? – the exhibition offers a rediscovery of Maillol’s work in confrontation with that of Picasso—also in motion, in tension, in transformation.