To find back the joy of living after the tragedy of World War II: it is the return to an explosive creativity what marks the happy years of Pablo Picasso, going from1945 to 1948. “La joie de vivre” is the title of the most emblematic work of this period and also of the exhibition now open at Palazzo Grassi until 11 March, about this period. Abanoned the grey tones of mourning characteristic of the war production, the ones of Guernica, now the colour triumphs, shiny blue, sunny yellow, in a word the colours of the Mediterranean. Happiness has a place, the Cote d’Azur, particularly Antibes, and has a face and a body, the one of his new partner, Françoise Gilot, who gives him two sons, Claude and Paloma. And it is exactly from the museum in Antibes, at the moment of restoration, that come most of the two hundred works of the exhibition, curated by the same director of the Jean-Louis Andral museum. The French museum indeed has the works that Picasso created between September and November 1946 in the hall of Castello Grimaldi, put at his disposal by the generosity of the castle keeper, Romuald Dor de la Souchère: 23 paintings and 44 drawings.

On all of them dominates “La joie de vivre” a big work (120 X 250 cm) where the use of ripolin, a new material, exalts the vivacity of colours. It is the representation of the Mediterranean myth of sexuality, with fauns playing the flute ( the artist is one of them) and the exaltation of the mother goddess, at the top of the composition (Françoise herself). But is is not a static divinity, it takes part into the game of dance. The iconography of fauns is a recurring theme of this period, exemplified on the canvasses, wonderful the one in the room where the main works are exhibited, and also in charming and quick drafts. To the theme of fecundity is linked another theme of the Mediterranean, the one of the bull: in an extremely interesting room is showed the sequence of different states of a lithography representing it. It is thus represented the process of simplification and abstraction of the image, from the first state in which the animal still has a realistic stoutness, up to the last state of extreme abstraction, still full in terms of energy. And also the goat in the main room is of an overflowing energy, as if it would come out of the canvas, keeping its vitality. Fishes, oblique moving crabs, fishermen form another picture of the Mediterranean world. After that comes the theme of the woman, exhibited in her luminosity, the sun-woman with circular shapes and luxuriant hair, a classical beauty. One of the traditions rediscovered by Picasso in Mediterranean land is the art of ceramics: he does it with the usual creative ímpetus, and in the workshop of Vallauris, near Antibes, in one year, from October 1947 to October 1948, he produces 2000 pieces: unusual shapes of bulls, fauns, women, owlets and condors come out from his unlimited fantasy, for the desperation of the artisans that must make them and the happiness of his son Claude.

To complete the exhibition there are the pictures by Michel Sima, documenting Picasso´s activity in this period. In line with the main exhibition, at the second floor of the building, there is also the statue of Picasso, with a big head, small body, striped sailor shirt, in the interpretation by Maurizio Cattelan, showed at the first floor, where there is a partially new exhibition of the collections of François Pinault, called “A Post Pop selection”, that is to say the new successors of pop- art. Particularly the engravings of the brothers Jake & Dinos Chapman, “Disasters of war” (1999) with clear reference to the famous series by Francisco Goya. Not less disturbing is the installation by Thomas Schutte “ Efficiency Man” (2005), three dummies with an indecipherable expression.