Concrete Playground

You can listen to outgoing director Edmund Capon by downloading one of his audio guides to the Art Gallery of NSW. But to hear what he's really saying, visit Picasso: Masterpieces from the Musée National Picasso, Paris. The Musée National Picasso is one of the lushest collections of Picasso's work in the world. Its appealing building, almost as appealing as the artwork itself, is closed for renovations for the next two years. So a sizeable chunk of its collection is on the move. Having just finished a Taiwanese engagement, it's taking on Sydney as a summer home.

The show promises to cover all of Picasso's highly varied styles and periods — 'blue', 'rose', Expressionist, Cubist, Neoclassical and Surrealist. Picasso collections tend to see his styles travel backwards in time, from the rose and blue periods' powerful realism, to arrive at his famous rough-brushed, cubist strokes. Realism came easily to Picasso, but the seemingly simpler stuff was the real work. He's said to have said "when I was just a child, I could already draw like Raphael, but it took me a whole lifetime to learn to draw like a child." And as Paris comes to Sydney, you too can get overwhelmed by some of his child-like wonder.

Picasso: Masterpieces from the Musée National Picasso opens in November, but timed-entry tickets are already on sale, and are likely to fill quickly.

Image via Jean-Gilles Berizzi and Réunion des Musées Nationaux.