BASEL.- 335,244 enthusiastic visitors, 1,300 guided tours and workshops, 63,000 audio guides, 11,000 catalogues, 28 events and more than 1,000 media reports: the exhibition “The Young Picasso – Blue and Rose Periods” closes with outstanding figures, becoming the Fondation Beyeler’s second most visited exhibition ever.

The major exhibition “The Young Picasso – Blue and Rose Periods” (3 February to 16 June 2019), which closed Sunday a week ago, drew a total of 335,244 visitors. The Fondation Beyeler’s most ambitious exhibition to date was devoted to paintings and sculptures created by the young Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) between 1901 and 1906, his so-called Blue and Rose Periods. It was the first time around 75 masterpieces from this key period, many of them milestones on Picasso’s path to preeminence as the twentieth century’s most famous artist, were presented in Europe in such density and quality.

The Fondation Beyeler’s art mediation team organised 1,300 guided tours and workshops. Never before had the museum registered such high visitor interest in its art mediation offerings. It was particularly gratifying to count 360 school classes with more than 7,000 pupils among the visitors who took part in the art mediation programme.

The Café Parisien, conceived specifically for the exhibition in the Souterrain of the Fondation Beyeler, proved highly popular. Furnished in Belle Époque style, it served French specialties and hosted an inventive programme of variety theatre and burlesque, readings and lectures, as well as concerts, providing many opportunities to round off a visit to the museum in style and high spirits. Its 28 events met with an enthusiastic response from audience members and provided a richly complementary approach to the young Picasso’s art. Visitors of all ages were particularly taken by the multimedia mediation space – developed in collaboration with iart – which provided additional insights into the artist’s life and work.

Media interest was also exceptionally high. 1,800 journalists viewed the exhibition and produced more than 1,000 articles and reports for print media, TV, radio and online platforms. As for the Fondation Beyeler’s Instagram account, it welcomed its 100,000th follower.

The Fondation Beyeler owns more than 30 works by Pablo Picasso, one of the largest and finest Picasso collections worldwide. Next to the main exhibition, the museum presented paintings and sculptures from the exceptional collection in an exhibition entitled “Picasso Panorama”, conceived as a tribute to the museum’s founders Ernst and Hildy Beyeler, for whom Picasso embodied the ideal artist. Over the decades, they sold more than 1,000 of his works and devoted numerous exhibitions to him in their gallery. Both exhibitions, “The Young Picasso – Blue and Rose Periods” and “Picasso Panorama”, were curated by Dr Raphaël Bouvier.

“Our exhibition devoted to the young Picasso drew a large and wide audience. As a museum with one of the most significant Picasso collections worldwide, we are very happy to have succeeded in bringing together a worldwide selection of the great Spanish artist’s early masterpieces”, says Sam Keller, Director of the Fondation Beyeler.

The exhibition was organised by the Fondation Beyeler in cooperation with the Musées d'Orsay et de I'Orangerie, Paris and the Musée National Picasso-Paris, where it was first staged in slightly amended form.

On 6 July, the collection display “Lost in time, like tears in rain” will open to showcase recent acquisitions next to beloved masterpieces by Rothko, Rousseau, Matisse, Monet, Warhol and Tillmans, to name only a few of our collection highlights. The exhibition devoted to contemporary painter Rudolf Stingel remains on view till 6 October.