A landmark exhibition at Artipelag traces the women whose art and influence shaped Pablo Picasso’s vision, from Cubism to the French Riviera.
GUSTAVSBERG, Sweden — This autumn, Artipelag will stage one of its most ambitious exhibitions to date: a survey of the women whose lives and work helped shape Pablo Picasso, reframing the 20th century master through the eyes of his muses, collaborators and rivals.
Titled The Muses Who Inspired and Challenged Picasso, the show opens 4 October and gathers more than 150 works by eight women who stood at the centre of his private and artistic life. It runs until 8 February 2026.
Picasso’s relationships with women were notoriously complex — spanning wives, mistresses, confidantes and friends. They stirred him to explore fresh forms of expression across literature, theatre, philosophy, dance, photography, ceramics and painting. The exhibition positions these figures as “muses” in the classical sense: not passive sources of inspiration, but guardians and active participants in artistic creation.
The survey moves chronologically, from the Cubist experiments of the early 20th century through Surrealism and into the post-war years on the French Riviera. Visitors encounter Gertrude Stein, the American writer whose salons drew the young Spaniard into Parisian avant-garde life; Fernande Olivier, his early companion and model; and Olga Khokhlova, a ballerina with Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, whose presence deepened his interest in stage design and performance.
The political urgency of the 1930s is represented by Dora Maar, the artist and photographer who documented the making of Guernica and sharpened Picasso’s awareness of social conflict. Another photographer, Lee Miller, both sat for Picasso and produced more than a thousand portraits of him, reinforcing his image as a cultural titan.
The post-war decades bring into focus Françoise Gilot, painter and author, who invigorated Picasso’s graphic work during their years together in Vallauris. There he also collaborated with Suzanne Ramié, artistic director of the Madoura pottery workshop, where he created ceramics for over two decades. Finally, the exhibition looks to Lydia Corbett — once known as Sylvette David — whose meeting with Picasso in the 1950s became a turning point in her own artistic journey.
By placing these women’s works alongside Picasso’s, The Muses Who Inspired and Challenged Picasso reframes the story of an artist long cast as solitary genius, showing instead a dialogue of mutual influence.
The participating artists are Lydia Corbett, Françoise Gilot, Olga Khokhlova, Dora Maar, Lee Miller, Fernande Olivier, Suzanne Ramié, Gertrude Stein — and Picasso himself.
The Muses Who Inspired and Challenged Picasso opens on the 4th of October, 2025 until the 8th of February, 2026 at Artipelag
©2025 Lee Miller, Artipelag
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