16.5.25

Day 2 at HIGH END Munich: United Photo Press Captures 41 High‑Resolution Demonstrations



On Friday, May 16, 2025, the bustling halls of the MOC Event Center in Munich set the stage for Day 2 of the HIGH END audio show, where United Photo Press dedicated its second day to filming 41 high-resolution demonstrations on the exhibition’s second floor. The HIGH END is renowned as the world’s leading international audio exhibition, bringing together over 500 exhibitors, 1,000 brands, and more than 22,000 visitors from over 40 countries across 30,000 m² of exhibition space. Over its four days, the event unites audio experts, producers, retailers, and music lovers under one roof to explore groundbreaking trends and world premieres in high-fidelity technology.

Beyond loudspeakers and streamers, Hall 1’s WORLD OF HEADPHONES zone has drawn crowds of enthusiasts eager to experience cutting-edge personal audio setups. Walking through the second-floor corridors felt like stepping into a curated sound gallery, where each soundproofed room showcased studio‑grade stereo systems and bespoke acoustic treatments. United Photo Press, a Munich‑based visual storytelling known for creating compelling narratives, leveraged its expertise to bring each listening session to life.

Using state‑of‑the‑art 4K cameras and ambisonic microphone arrays, the team captured every subtle detail of the presentations, from the warmth of tube‑driven amplifiers to the transparency of titanium‑tweeter speakers. Among the 41 recordings, listeners will find an array of demonstrations—from vintage components to modern digital streamers—highlighting the diversity of today’s high‑end audio landscape. The immersive footage oscillates between tight close‑ups of precision-crafted drivers and sweeping chamber views, reflecting United Photo Press’s commitment to both technical rigor and artistic framing.

All 41 videos are now live and can be viewed in high resolution on the United Photo Press Facebook page at www.facebook.com/unitedphotopress

As this edition marks the final Munich appearance of HIGH END before it relocates to Vienna, these recordings serve as a rich audiovisual archive of the show’s storied legacy. We invite readers and fellow audiophiles worldwide to press play and immerse themselves in the art and engineering of high‑fidelity reproduction, captured by United Photo Press at Munich’s grand audio spectacle.

P.S. - All videos have been recorded in high resolution and are best experienced with headphones for optimal audio immersion.

Carlos Alves de Sousa
United Photo Press
www.unitedphotopress.com

Stone, Sound, and Soul: Inside the Vision of Stones Speakers at HIGH END Munich 2025



From the moment you enter Hall 4 at High End Munich 2025, the commanding presence of Stones Speakers’ towering monolithic columns demands your attention. Carved entirely by hand from Euganean Trachyte—an ancient volcanic stone sourced from Italy’s Euganean Hills—these sculptural loudspeakers are not just feats of acoustic engineering, but profound expressions of heritage craftsmanship.

In a conversation with Carlos Alves de Sousa of United Photo Press, CEO Giacomo Munari shared the philosophy behind the company’s boldest showcase to date. “We start with 500-kg blocks of Trachyte, hand-selected for tonal neutrality and structural integrity,” Munari explained. “This stone has been valued since Roman times, and working with it is a tribute to both history and sonic purity.” At a workshop outside Padua, Master Mason Michele and his team use traditional chisels alongside diamond-tipped routers to shape each speaker over several meticulous weeks.

Yet, what’s hidden inside these stone giants is just as impressive. “Stone can sing—but not always in a good way,” Munari joked. To tame unwanted resonances, each column is lined with a precisely engineered lattice of stainless-steel ribs and sorbothane pads, creating an enclosure that isolates the driver’s energy and eliminates coloration. A cutaway model reveals this intricate anatomy—proof of the team’s relentless pursuit of acoustic transparency.

Stones Speakers designs its own drivers in-house: paper-coned woofers provide warmth, ceramic-coated midranges offer pristine clarity, and ribbon tweeters are carefully recessed to reduce diffraction. Combined, they deliver an uncolored midrange and thunderous yet controlled bass that few wooden or metal cabinets can replicate. In demo sessions, listeners described an almost holographic soundstage—where the stone seemed to disappear, leaving only the music suspended in space.

But these speakers are more than just instruments of sound. “We see them as art pieces,” Munari said. Each pair is unique, with hand-finished textures ranging from honed matte to subtly polished surfaces, some adorned with marble inlays or integrated LED uplighting that reveals the stone’s natural grain at dusk. During the show, a display model with charcoal veins and mica highlights shimmered under the lights, drawing admiration from audiophiles and art lovers alike.

Installation is no small feat—each 300-kg column requires custom wheeled cradles and a two-man team. But the impact is undeniable. “It’s not just a speaker—it’s a presence,” Munari noted. “Our clients aren’t merely audiophiles; they’re collectors who understand that beauty and performance should coexist.”

Looking forward, Stones Speakers is preparing a limited “Heritage Series” crafted from lumachella limestone, a richly patterned stone from nearby quarries. Each pair will include a certificate of provenance and a booklet detailing the geological history of the material. There are also plans for compact stone-encased headphone amps and center channels, expanding the brand’s offerings without compromising its core ethos.

As our conversation closed, Munari reflected on what drives their mission. “We’re telling a story—of place, time, and the human touch,” he said. “In a world of carbon fiber and CNC-machined aluminum, rediscovering the soul of sound through ancient stone feels not just radical, but necessary.”

By the end of High End Munich’s opening day, Stones Speakers had transcended the role of product. They stood as a testament to what happens when centuries-old materials meet uncompromising modern design—where craftsmanship becomes resonance, and stone becomes song.


Carlos Alves de Sousa
United Photo Press
www.unitedphotopress.com

15.5.25

The HIGH END international audio exhibition kicked off today



The HIGH END international audio exhibition kicked off today (May 15–18, 2025) at Munich’s MOC Event Center, showcasing around 500 exhibitors and over 800 high-fidelity brands from more than 40 countries. Norwegian singer-songwriter Anette Askvik inaugurated the fair as brand ambassador, opening with an immersive live performance of her album Liberty in a spatial audio format powered by Kii Audio. Her ethereal voice and cinematic arrangements set the tone for a show where music, innovation and emotion walk hand in hand.

The newly relocated Press Center in Atrium 2 proved to be a welcoming space for journalists and content creators alike—flooded with natural light, equipped with fast Wi-Fi, comfortable workstations, and quiet zones for interviews. A true upgrade that reflects the growing importance of media coverage in the audiophile world.

United Photo Press was present on the ground and documented the opening day in an unedited 30-minute film, offering a raw and immersive glimpse into the first hours of the event. Accompanied by a laid-back jazz soundtrack, the footage is now available for viewing here: UNITED PHOTO PRESS presents HIGH END 2025 (1)

The exhibition floor buzzed with excitement, offering continuous demos across all audio domains—from cutting-edge digital streamers and DACs to boutique tube amplifiers and handcrafted turntables. Over 70 headphone brands converged in the dedicated “World of Headphones” hall, where visitors could sit and compare models in optimized listening conditions. Every square meter of the venue pulsed with audio: from studio-grade monitors delivering ultra-precise imaging to compact wireless speakers that blend lifestyle with fidelity.

For lovers of analog sound, vinyl rigs were everywhere. Classic turntables paired with high-current modern amplifiers gave life to lush, resonant soundscapes. Many rooms showcased side-by-side setups that bridged retro aesthetics and contemporary engineering, giving a clear nod to the fair’s unofficial theme: where tradition meets innovation. Younger attendees were equally engaged—gravitating to systems with sleek form factors and DSP-tuned drivers that deliver immersive audio without cables or complications.

Anette Askvik’s role as brand ambassador wasn’t limited to the stage. Her presence reminded visitors of the emotional core behind high-end audio. Her immersive live set, presented through a multichannel spatial system by Kii Audio, gave a breathtaking demonstration of how technology can preserve, and even enhance, the soul of music. Special panels and roundtables also added intellectual weight to the fair. One in particular, focused on sustainability in vinyl production, featured artists and audio professionals discussing how tradition can evolve responsibly.

Back in the Press Center, daily conferences started at 11 AM sharp, offering direct access to product managers, designers, and even performing artists. The facilities were perfectly suited for fast turnarounds—many journalists were seen filing live updates and interviews in real-time, reflecting the energy of the show itself.

United Photo Press’s visual documentary captures it all: the first awe-struck faces stepping into demo rooms, the quiet focus of critical listening, impromptu technical explanations, and even candid moments in corridors where the real networking happens. Set against the smooth flow of jazz, the video is both a time capsule and an invitation to those who couldn't attend.

HIGH END Munich 2025 runs through Sunday, May 18. But even before the final note has played, the echoes of innovation, artistry, and passion will be felt long after. In 2026, the exhibition relocates to Vienna—a new city, a new chapter, but undoubtedly the same uncompromising dedication to the art of sound.

Carlos Alves de Sousa
United Photo Press

HIGH END Munich 2025 Fair Opens with Global Audio Buzz



From the moment I stepped into Munich’s MOC Event Center this morning, I could feel the air humming with anticipation—and not just from the fluorescent lights overhead. The High End fair had officially opened its doors, and the rich aroma of freshly unpacked cables, lacquered wood cabinets and precisely machined aluminum fronts wrapped itself around me like a warm, familiar blanket. Everywhere I turned, demo rooms pulsed with music: delicate piano trills through open‑baffle speakers, vinyl crackle giving way to sumptuous midrange from state‑of‑the‑art tube amplifiers, and the smoothest jazz riffs I’ve heard in months—each sonic vignette more intoxicating than the last.

Navigating the aisles, I spotted everything from minimalist desktop wireless systems to towering floor‑standers that looked like modern art installations. One brand had a system so transparent I swore I could hear the room breathing; another offered retro‑styled turntables, their platters floating above carbon‑fiber bases as if by magic. The technicians invited me to sit, dimmed the lights and let the music take over—sometimes a vintage Frank Sinatra cut, other times an avant‑garde chamber performance I’d never encountered. In every corner, engineers and designers hovered, tweaking crossovers or swapping cartridges, their eyes alight with the same obsessive passion that drives all of us who chase that perfect, uncolored sound.

Today’s standout moment came courtesy of United Photo Press, who rolled out a raw, 30‑minute film of the opening day. Backed by a laid‑back jazz score, the footage captures it all: the first curious visitors threading through narrow corridors; side‑by‑side comparisons of rival loudspeakers; candid interviews with brand ambassadors in the sunlit press center of Atrium 2, where expansive windows and plush seating made for the most civilized media lounge I’ve ever experienced. Watching it, I felt as though I’d relive every goose‑bump moment—like discovering a newish ribbon‑tweeter design that flirts with impossibly low distortion, or stumbling on a headphone benchmark that finally nails the bass without muddying the treble.

The press center itself felt like a high‑end system: spacious, ergonomically designed, and bathed in natural light that made laptops glow and notes scribbled in margins come alive. Journalists from across the globe clustered around power outlets, trading sound impressions in half‑spoken dialects as they compared headphone pads and USB cables. It was the perfect oasis between demo room marathons.

As I jot down this report, the fair’s energy lingers in my veins. Whether you’re chasing that elusive midband purity or simply craving the thrill of new sonic horizons, High End Munich never disappoints. For those of us who live by every decibel, today was a feast—and thanks to United Photo Press’s unedited film, you can taste it too. Just press play on their YouTube link, let the jazz soundtrack guide you, and prepare to feel the pulse of audiophile heaven.



Carlos Alves de Sousa
United Photo Press

10.5.25

United Photo Press Announces 35th Anniversary Book Project

 


United Photo Press Announces 35th Anniversary Book Project


Munich – United Photo Press, a global leader in contemporary photography exhibitions for over three decades, is excited to announce its 35th anniversary. To commemorate this milestone, the organization is inviting UPP members & guests artists worldwide to contribute to a special, limited-edition book titled “Reconnected 35”.

This deluxe hardcover publication will celebrate the rich history and diverse talent of United Photo Press, showcasing the work of both established and emerging artists. To be included in the book, artists are invited to submit an updated photo of themselves, a brief biography, and a selection of 10 high-resolution images.

Submissions are due by June 31, 2025, and can be sent to info@unitedphotopress.net

"We are thrilled to invite our global community of artists to participate in this exciting project,” said Carlos Sousa president at United Photo Press. “This book will serve as a testament to the enduring power of photography and the incredible talent of our artists & guests."

The "Reconnected 35" book is expected to be released worldwide in the first quarter of 2025. Members of United Photo Press & guests can pre-order their copies for a special price, plus shipping.

About United Photo Press

United Photo Press has a long-standing reputation for showcasing innovative and thought-provoking contemporary photography & books. With exhibitions held across four continents, the organization has fostered a global community of artists and photography enthusiasts.


25.4.25

“A Symphony of Innovation: HIGH END 2025 Set to Illuminate Munich & the world with Audio Marvels”


From May 15–18, 2025, the MOC Event Center in Munich will transform into a global pilgrimage site for audio aficionados, as HIGH END 2025—the world’s foremost exhibition for premium music reproduction—returns for its 41st edition. Under this year’s resounding theme, “Passion for Music,” hundreds of exhibitors from over 40 countries, alongside parallel showcases IPS – International Parts + Supply and WORLD OF HEADPHONES, will unveil groundbreaking technologies and exclusive world premieres that redefine sonic excellence. Brand ambassador Anette Askvik, celebrated for her seamless blend of emotional depth and technical precision, will personify the exhibition’s ethos.

UNITED PHOTO PRESS will be on-site throughout all four days, delivering in-depth reporting, evocative photography, and dynamic film features, bringing readers closer than ever to the cutting edge of high-fidelity sound.

A Festival of Sonic Mastery - Four Decades of Auditory Evolution
Since its inception in 1984, HIGH END has stood at the vanguard of audio innovation, setting global benchmarks for quality and performance. What began as a modest gathering of European hi-fi specialists has blossomed into an international showcase where manufacturers, designers, and music lovers converge to celebrate the art and science of sound.

Munich: The Beating Heart of High-Fidelity
The spacious halls and light-filled atriums of Munich’s MOC Event Center provide the perfect stage for exhibitors to demonstrate room-shaking subwoofers, crystal-clear streaming solutions, and the latest in acoustic treatment. From boutique speaker builders to major electronics brands, the sheer diversity of offerings guarantees that every visitor—from audiophile to industry insider—will discover new ways to experience their favorite music.

Parallel Universes of Innovation - IPS – International Parts + Supply
Beyond finished audio systems lies the world of components. IPS highlights the vital parts—precision capacitors, bespoke wiring, proprietary drivers—that form the foundation of high-end audio. Attendees can meet the artisans and engineers who craft these elements, gaining insights into the fine tolerances and meticulous testing that underpin every great system.

WORLD OF HEADPHONES
Personal audio continues to captivate enthusiasts and casual listeners alike. In its own dedicated zone, WORLD OF HEADPHONES spotlights the latest in portable lossless playback, noise-cancelling marvels, and custom in-ear monitors. From luxury over-ear headphones costing thousands to breakthrough wireless earbuds, this segment underscores the personal dimension of musical immersion.

“Passion for Music” Personified - Anette Askvik: Voice of the Exhibition
Norwegian songstress Anette Askvik, known for her hypnotic vocals and cinematic arrangements, has been named HIGH END 2025’s brand ambassador. Her oeuvre—where raw emotion meets meticulous production—mirrors the exhibition’s devotion to marrying soul-stirring artistry with technological prowess. Throughout the event, Askvik will host select live performances and speak on panels exploring the interplay between artist intention and playback fidelity.

What to Expect on the Show Floor
- World Premieres and Concept Demonstrations
- This year’s buzz centers on a clutch of world premieres:
- Emmersive 3D Audio Suite: A collaboration between leading DSP firms, promising to envelop listeners in fully spatialized sound.
- Next-Gen Vinyl Replay: A high-precision turntable design that virtually eliminates groove distortion.
- Modular Streaming Processor: A plug-and-play digital hub that adapts to evolving codec standards.
- Each demonstration promises not only impressive specs but also real-world listening sessions designed to let media and retailers experience the difference firsthand.
- Interactive Masterclasses: Across multiple lecture rooms, experts will share knowledge on topics such as tube-amp design, digital-analog conversion, and room-acoustic optimization. These sessions offer both technical deep dives for engineers and accessible introductions for curious consumers.

UNITED PHOTO PRESS: Your Insider Access - Behind the Scenes with Our Reporter
Commits to capturing every illuminating moment:
- Feature Interviews with pioneering designers.
- On-floor Photography, from grand reveal ceremonies to candid exhibitor interactions.
- Documentary-Style Filming, weaving together expert insights and visceral listening experiences into compelling video packages.

HIGH END 2025 promises to be a landmark event for the global audio community. Whether you’re chasing the subtlest harmonic detail, seeking the next portable listening breakthrough, or simply reveling in the shared joy of music, Munich’s MOC will deliver. Stay tuned to UNITED PHOTO PRESS for unparalleled coverage—because every note, every nuance, and every innovation deserves to be heard.

www.highendsociety.de

Carlos Alves de Sousa
United Photo Press

24.4.25

What Vivian Maier Saw in Color

Self-portrait New York NY May 5 1955


From the 1950s until a few years before she died, in 2009, destitute at the age of 83, Vivian Maier took at least 150,000 pictures, mostly in Chicago, and showed them to nobody. Now she has earned her place alongside Diane Arbus, Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander, Lisette Model, Garry Winogrand, and other giants of the American street. See her vivid photos, which might have languished in obscurity if not for a chance acquisition.

A photograph is a secret about a secret,” Diane Arbus said. In the case of Vivian Maier, the photographer was a secret, too. From the nineteen-fifties until a few years before she died, in 2009, destitute at the age of eighty-three, Maier took at least a hundred and fifty thousand pictures, mostly in Chicago, and showed them to nobody. It’s telling, perhaps, that one of her favorite motifs was to shoot her own shadow. For decades, she supported herself as a nanny in the wealthy enclaves of the city. But her real work was roaming the streets with her camera (often with her young charges in tow), capturing images of sublime spontaneity, wit, and compositional savvy. When pressed about her occupation by a man she once knew, Maier didn’t describe herself as a nanny. She said, “I am sort of a spy.” All the best street photographers are.

Maier’s covert work might have languished in obscurity if not for the chance acquisition, in 2007, of a cache of negatives, prints, contact sheets, and unprocessed rolls of film, all seized from a storage locker because she fell behind on the rent. When John Maloof, a Chicago real-estate agent, bought the material, everything about Maier’s identity was a mystery except for her name. It was only when he ran across her death notice, two years later, that her story began to unfold. (His wonderful documentary on the subject, “Finding Vivian Maier,” was nominated for an Academy Award in 2015.) Maier shot in both color and black-and-white; perhaps to establish her credibility as a “serious” artist, the first of her pictures to be widely disseminated were the latter. Now that Maier has earned her place alongside Arbus, Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander, Lisette Model, Garry Winogrand, and other giants of the American street, a new book, “Vivian Maier: The Color Work,” and a related exhibition at Howard Greenberg Gallery (opening on November 14th) consider her eye for the vivid.


Chicago, 1978.


Maier is such an original artist that it feels a like a cheat to play games of compare and contrast. But, leafing through the book, it’s remarkable how often other photographers spring to mind. On an unknown date, at the Art Institute of Chicago, she pulled a Thomas Struth when she documented a mother (a nanny?) and a child staring raptly at a painting on the wall, both dressed in navy and white; the composition is centrally anchored by another child staring, defiantly, directly at Maier. 

In another image, a red-headed boy, who sucks his thumb while slumped against a wood-panelled wall on which four framed handguns are hanging, could be the shy, sullen cousin of Arbus’s manic boy with a toy hand grenade. The detached bumper and crash-crumpled metal of a Volkswagen Beetle, shot in Chicagoland in 1977, assumes sculptural proportions that invite thoughts of Arnold Odermatt, the Swiss policeman whose forensic photos of automobile accidents deserve to be more widely known.


Location unknown, 1960.


The Beetle was yellow, a color that brings out Maier’s best. In 1975, she took one of her shadow self-portraits against a green lawn dotted with little gold blossoms; cropped by the lens, the dainty, painterly landscape splits the difference between a Warhol silkscreen of flowers and the allover compositions of AbEx. (Note that Maier was shooting her shadow in the nineteen-fifties, roughly a decade before Friedlander, who is renowned for the gesture, did the same.) 

The same year, she came across two men on a sidewalk—one standing, one striding—both wearing canary shorts and lemon-fizz socks. To their right is a woman in a sensibly dark woolly cardigan and a daffodil-colored skirt. Their outfits are almost absurdly sunny, but not one of them is smiling.


Chicagoland, April, 1977.


Maier can pack an entire short story’s worth of details into a single frame. Consider the overly tan, skin-baring couple shot in an unknown location in 1960. They stand peeping through two cruciform holes in a high wall separating them from a swimming pool. The woman’s dingy white curls echo the hue of the stucco; his peeling, freckled back repeats its mottled texture. The ruched fabric of her bitter-orange bathing suit is the same palette and pattern as a poolside cushion in the near distance.

Past the man’s ear, there’s a lively brunette whose blue one-piece is a shade darker than the water below. She’s thrown her arms in the air, as if describing a wild night at a party. The elderly pair are on the outside looking in, and it’s worse than having their noses pressed against glass—they can smell the chlorine. When you see that she’s clutching a wrinkly brown paper bag, the mise en scène becomes somehow sadder.


Location unknown, c. 1960–1976.


The Art Institute of Chicago, date unknown.


One question that has dogged the discovery of Maier’s photography is how a lowly nanny could make such high art. Let’s call that sexism. I’ve never heard anyone ask how another exceptional Chicago outsider, the visionary writer and artist Henry Darger, could have produced his fifteen-thousand-page magnum opus while holding down a job as a janitor. The photographer Joel Meyerowitz contributed a foreword to the new book, a canny choice given that, like Maier, he learned how to shoot on the streets. He also co-wrote (with Colin Westerbeck, who also contributes an essay) an esteemed volume on the genre, “Bystander: A History of Street Photography.” 

He concludes, rightly, that “Maier was an early poet of color photography.” But he also floats a wince-inducing theory about her knack for snatching secrets, what he terms all great street photographers’ “cloak of invisibility”: “She’s as plain as an old-fashioned schoolmarm. She’s the wallflower, the spinster aunt, the ungainly tourist in the big city . . . except . . . she isn’t!” Has Henri Cartier-Bresson’s “decisive moment” ever been defined in terms of his looks?


Location and date unknown.


Location and date unknown.


Chicagoland, March 1977.


Chicago, December 1974.


Chicago, 1975.



Location unknown, 1976.


Chicago, 1973.


Self-portrait, Chicagoland, 1975.


Self-portrait, Chicagoland, October 1975.

Andrea K. Scott



The MKG’s 125th Annual Exhibition at the Münchner Künstlerhaus


Whispers of Heritage, Echoes of Tomorrow: The MKG’s 125th Annual Exhibition at the Münchner Künstlerhaus, Illuminating Munich’s Artistic Pulse through April 27


The Münchner Künstlerhaus’s group exhibition, organized by the Münchner Künstlergenossenschaft (MKG), ran from April 19 to 27, 2025, showcasing over 120 works across painting, graphic drawing, and sculpture. Founded in 1868, the MKG brings together professional artists dedicated to promoting and disseminating the visual arts throughout Bavaria and beyond. Staged within the historic Künstlerhaus building in Munich, this event offered visitors a richly varied panorama of the local and regional contemporary art scene, highlighting themes such as urban identity, the clash between nature and industrialization, and formal experimentation. The visit was documented with photographs of numerous installations and works on display, capturing the depth and diversity of techniques and styles.


An aura of anticipation has settled over the venerable Künstlerhaus in Lenbachplatz, where, since April 19, the Münchner Künstlergenossenschaft’s annual exhibition has been unveiling its treasures to the city. Running through April 27, this showcase invites both Munich’s art aficionados and curious travelers to wander beneath the glass dome, whose natural light suffuses each painting, drawing, and sculpture with a luminous stillness . In honour of the MKG’s 125th anniversary, the exhibition weaves together threads of heritage and innovation, offering a poetic dialogue between time-honoured craft and contemporary experiment.


Bespoke QR codes discreetly accompany each work, opening doorways to films, artist interviews, and glimpses of their creative odysseys—a digital leitmotif that enriches the intimate encounter between observer and creator . Under the discerning eye of curator Dr. Anna Müller, the chosen pieces explore the pulse of urban existence, the tension between industry and wilderness, and the elastic boundaries of form. While each gallery unfolds its own narrative, together they compose a symphony of ideas that resonates throughout the historic halls.


In the painting galleries, Sandra Köhler’s monumental canvases juxtapose the rust and grit of factory silhouettes with the lush vibrancy of woodland vistas, creating a chiaroscuro of nature’s clash and convergence . Julia Wagner’s brushstrokes fracture the city skyline into kinetic shards, evoking the perpetual motion of metropolitan life in rippling layers of oil . The graphic drawings present a contrapuntal counterpoint: Petra Neumann distills Munich’s skyline into elegant ink lines on translucent rice paper, each stroke a testament to minimalism’s evocative power , while Tobias Klein’s hybrid compositions merge traditional India ink with the precision of vector graphics, forging a visual language that is both ancestral and avant-garde.


Stepping into the main hall, sculptures command their own gravity-defying presence. Lukas Schmidt’s “Peso Leve” rises three meters, its lattice of steel beams choreographing a ballet of tension and buoyancy that seems to defy physical laws . In contrast, Anna Fischer’s reclaimed timber installations speak of rebirth and sustainability, organic forms emerging from aged beams as if sprouting anew from the very floorboards.


Critics and visitors alike have responded with ardour. The Süddeutsche Zeitung praised the exhibition’s harmonious balance between Carl Spitzweg’s quaint romanticism and the probing vigour of today’s innovators, dubbing the show “a triumphant union of past and future” . The Münchner Merkur lauded the technical virtuosity of the sculptural works, suggesting that the inclusion of live performances in future editions could amplify the dynamic interplay between art and audience.


With over 3,000 admissions recorded in its first week, the exhibition underscores the MKG’s enduring role as a beacon of Munich’s cultural life. Admission is priced at €8, with concessions at €5 for students and visitors with disabilities; tickets are available at the on-site box office only . Open daily from 11 a.m. until 6 p.m. (closing at 4 p.m. on the final day), the Künstlerhaus offers ample time for contemplation and discovery until Sunday, April 27.


Looking ahead, the MKG has announced a 2026 biennial in partnership with leading European institutions, promising artist residencies, cross-border exchanges, and a pioneering online catalogue that will bring its members’ creations to a global stage . In the meantime, these last days of the 2025 exhibition beckon all who seek to experience the rich interplay of tradition and transformation at the heart of Munich’s artistic spirit.


Carlos Alves de Sousa
United Photo Press

23.4.25

The Rise of Pablo Picasso




How a young man from Málaga became one of the costliest painters on earth.


Pablo Ruiz y Picasso has been the most talked-of and written-about artist on earth. Commercially he has become the costliest painter alive and aesthetically he has remained the most influential. His pictures, like hand-painted gilt-edged stocks, have followed a rising graph of their own; he has influenced a generation of painters who copied what they understood of him and he has influenced a public which has bought him without always understanding any part of him. When he first came to Paris, as a Spanish youth of nineteen, he dressed as a laboring man because of poverty and a preference for the picturesque. Even in recent years, when seen sitting prosperous and unoccupied in a Left Bank café, he has retained a look of sombre isolation and of a man devoted to work. Miss Gertrude Stein’s friend, Miss Alice B. Toklas, says a friend of hers said Picasso looks like a handsome bootblack.

He is a Spanish bourgeois. He was born in Málaga, October 25, 1881. His mother’s people were silversmiths, originally from Genoa; his father, of Basque origin, became drawing teacher at the estimable Barcelona Academy of Fine Arts, which, had it known what the son was in future to paint, would not have thought it fine or art. Young Pablo’s connection with his father’s institution was that of a passing prodigy who at the age of fifteen completed in one day the competitive art examination which older students were given a month for. A few months later he was received at the Madrid Academy for a year; then, three years later, in 1900, he went to Paris, centre of European art.

Impressionism, the great nineteenth century iconoclastic art movement, which the public had greeted with jeers, was then on its highly respectable way out. Cubism, the twentieth century’s new revolutionary art formula, which the public was also to hoot at, was almost on its way in, though Picasso, who was to lead Cubism, didn’t know it yet. He was still busy painting like the Impressionist Toulouse-Lautrec. Picasso finally settled in Montmartre at 13 Rue Ravignan in a ramshackle edifice resembling a Seine laundry boat and nicknamed Le Bateau-Lavoir. Those were heroic Montmartre days, since a handful of imaginative, important artists were, in poverty, hatching their fabulous future. Though he was unsociable, Picasso’s talent eventually placed him with the other talented unknowns with whom he belonged—with the minor poet Max Jacob, first to discover and make a cult of Picasso; the major poet (then editor of a physical-culture magazine) Guillaume Apollinaire, first to write of Picasso; the struggling painters Derain, Braque, Matisse, Modigliani, Juan Gris, Van Dongen, and Marie Laurencin. Other friends were Frédé, art-loving innkeeper of the uproarious Lapin Agile, who used to bring his pet donkey to parties; innocent Douanier Rousseau, about to marry for the third time; and Picasso’s model, the beautiful Fernande Olivier. Everybody was, or acted, young; everybody borrowed money from everybody else, and owed money for paint and rent; everybody quarrelled, made love, drank, ate risotto because it was cheap, and worked like a steam engine. Picasso carried a revolver, kept a tame white mouse in a table drawer, couldn’t afford even the luxury of painting on his walls—as he had when a student in Spain—pictures of the furniture he lacked. When he didn’t have white paint for his pictures, he painted with blue; when he ran out of new canvas, over the portrait of a crippled flower-seller he painted the big red harlequin that later figured in the Rouart collection; when he lacked linseed oil, he painted with lamp oil. He always kept on hand a supply of lamp oil because he worked at night so people couldn’t bother him.

At one time he was so poor that he and Max Jacob occupied the same bed in turns. Jacob, who besides being a cultivated poet was an impoverished novelty-shop clerk, slept at night while Picasso worked; when Jacob got up in the morning to let Picasso go to bed, the floor would be carpeted with drawings, which Jacob had to walk on and from which his footprints later had to be cleaned by art experts, since every early Picasso fragment eventually became so valuable that it could be sold. These first few Paris years in Picasso’s young twenties were viewed as a period of art, partially happy and entirely human, and were thus rare for him. At this time he painted his sad groups of the blue-colored Blue Period (after pleasant trips home to Spain) and his precious, romantic, rosy-tinted Rose Period figures (after a journey to Holland, which he found gloomy and didn’t like). This was also the feverishly fecund Harlequin Period, during which he painted the tumblers, harlequins, and jugglers whom he admired at the Médrano Circus; when he sympathetically painted the beautiful thin skulls of the poor, topped by gay clowns’ hats; when he portrayed the spangled acrobat, his wife, and male child, posed like a new Holy Family in lovely disguise. This was Picasso’s only art period of sentimental and sociological sensibility, and he probably didn’t mean it to be either. He was simply a young painter who was painting.

The first picture Picasso ever sold was bought the day after he arrived in Paris in 1900 by a Mademoiselle Berthe Weill, who ran a bric-a-brac shop and bought anybody’s first picture at any time. The next year, Vollard, the great eccentric art merchant, gave Picasso an obscure little exhibition called “Scènes des Courses et des Cabarets” and bought some pictures which, as was his habit, he hid in his cellar, where they brought Picasso no renown. Soulié, a mattress dealer on the Rue des Martyrs, also bought Picassos, apparently for a horse dealer with leanings toward art speculation. The art merchant Sagot, who kept his pictures in an old pharmacy and gave artists handouts of stale medicines, also purchased Picassos—at cruelly low prices. Once, when Picasso refused 700 francs (then $140) for three big paintings, Sagot offered 500 francs and, to Picasso’s helpless, hungry fury, got them the day after for 300. Picasso was then alone in his spirited resistance to the art merchants’ racket. As a chorus girl traditionally hopes for a butter-and-egg man, so in France the poor, unknown artist must hope to be kept by an art merchant, to whom he cedes a long term contract for his future at a low price. Even when a beginner, Picasso refused to do this, as he also refused to manifest group solidarity and show his pictures at the Salon des Indépendants. In purchasing Picasso as a discovery, Russian, German, and American collectors were ahead of the French, who had also been slow in taking to Impressionism. The first collector to buy Picasso was Shchukin, the rich Russian industrialist whose Picassos now hang in the Soviet Museum of Modern Western Art in Moscow. The expatriate German collector-merchant Kahnweiler was another early buyer.

However, just before this time, Gertrude Stein, rich in enthusiasm but modest in means and then about as unknown as a writer as Picasso was as a painter, began her famous and eclectic Picasso collection and her friendship with him, which, through squabbles and over years, have been two of the most important personal elements in the Picasso legend. For her first Picasso, she and her brother Leo paid Sagot 150 francs and all three quarrelled about the picture’s merits. It was the early, exquisite, conventional nude, “A Little Girl with Basket of Flowers.” Miss Stein, who was already ripe to prefer stranger sights in art, thought the girl looked classically flat-footed; Sagot suggested they guillotine the girl and keep only the head. After Miss Stein became friends with Picasso she bought directly from him; she says that from 1906 to 1909 the Stein family controlled the Picasso output, since no one else wanted it. By 1919 she could no longer offer to buy at 100 francs pictures that were worth thousands, so Picasso gave them to her. In 1906, she posed eighty times for his portrait of her, after which he wiped the face off, saying he couldn’t “see” her any more, and then finished the likeness in Spain, where he couldn’t see her at all. He also gave her this portrait because, as he later said, at that time in his career the difference between a gift and a sale was, after all, negligible. He also said, when friends complained that the portrait didn’t look like her, that someday she’d look like the portrait. This has never happened, and became less likely than ever to happen when she cut her hair, which upset Picasso more than any of her other friends because his portrait showed her with her hair long. The 1906 Stein portrait was a boundary mark; it showed that the gay, romantic period was definitely at an end, that the intellectual, serious search for Cubism was now on.

Why Cubism had to be invented still puzzles a large public. At the time, the poet Apollinaire, in his famous essay on the subject, said that Cubism was “a search for a new composition with formal elements borrowed not from the reality of vision but from the reality of conception”—words which bewildered Parisians no less than the paintings themselves. More bluntly defined, Cubism was apparently an effort scientifically to give painting not two but three dimensions, these to be attained, in theory anyhow, by depicting the subject—whether an apple or a man—as if it or he consisted of visible geometric facets. Thus, in practice, the Cubist portrait of a handsome man looked like a still life of beautiful building blocks. Cubism also was probably an early prophetic Zeitgeist reflection of the non-naturalistic machine-age civilization. In any case, Cubism marked the point in modern art where the artist and public no longer saw eye to eye no matter what both were looking at; when the artist, indeed, began deliberately painting what he did not see and what no one else could check up on.

Who, from what source, at what date, and with what picture, invented Cubism, which Picasso at any rate was to dominate, is still a delicate dispute. The first authentic example of Cubism, modern museum men say, was done in 1907 by Picasso—his big painting “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon.” Miss Stein says Picasso’s three 1908 pictures of some cubelike cottages in Spain were “the real beginning of Cubism.” She also says that some African Negro masks (whose exotic angularity also reportedly aided in formulating Cubism) were perhaps shown by the sculptor Maillol to the painter Matisse, who then showed them to the painter Picasso, though there was also the tradition that Picasso first saw the masks through the painter Derain. She says still further that probably the name “Cubism” was invented by Apollinaire. Jean Cocteau says Cubism was a name invented by Matisse to deride a south-of-France picture by Braque in the 1908 Indépendants show; Apollinaire says that the Negro sculpture “which was destined to influence new French art” was discovered by Vlaminck and that the friendship between Picasso and Derain in 1905 “gave birth to Cubism, which at first was, above all, a sort of impressionism of the forms which Cézanne had envisioned toward the end of his life.” Picasso himself simply and plurally says, “When we made Cubism we didn’t mean to make Cubism but to express what was in us.” Although the French public at first said only that Cubism was crazy, a leading art merchant added, “I am now buying Picasso not because I have any taste for him but because he will be worth a lot of money someday.” By 1910, Cubism was a regular French studio school, with Jean Metzinger as its first academic theorician and Gleizes, Delaunay, and Léger as faithful exponents. Picasso’s precise early version of Cubism was so much copied that he called one of his best impersonators “the louse that lives on my head.” One night, at the beginning of the World War, Picasso and Miss Stein were taking a walk when they saw a camouflaged truck for the first time. He was amazed by its resemblance to Cubist art, and, in the tone of a man who has just been plagiarized, said, “Why, it is we who invented that!” Later, when a new field uniform for the French army was being discussed, he told Cocteau, “If they want to make an army invisible at a distance, all they have to do is dress the men as harlequins.”

After the war, when the alien Kahnweiler’s scholarly Cubist collection, which had been seized by the French government, was sold for low prices by an anti-Cubist auctioneer (whose head Braque punched, to teach him about modern art), Cubist paintings, like any commodity in a bear market, slumped. Now the New York Museum of Modern Art’s recent Cubist acquisition, “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon,” has just been valued by art experts at $20,000, the highest figure any contemporary canvas, even by Picasso, has reached. When, years ago, the collector Shchukin first saw the picture, he wailed that its ugliness marked the end of modern French art. Many people still think the historic young ladies from Avignon are a frightening lot.


By 1912, for those painters who had struggled in Paris to create the new art, the big moment had passed, because prosperity was creeping up on them. Poverty had united Picasso and his comrades; success separated them. He moved from Montmartre to the nicer Left Bank, and they, too, went their more comfortable ways.

From 1896 down through 1939 (according to experts, when they can agree), Picasso’s pictures fall into about twenty-six styles, most of them such typical Picassos that they look as if they had been painted by twenty-six different men. No other painter of his stature has ever offered so many completely differentiated versions of himself as Picasso. For forty years he has been in a constant fit of metamorphosis. Starting in his youth as the most gifted graphic artist of his time—i.e., the one most able to delineate likenesses of things or people in the grand manner—he has spent his years detailing unlikenesses in an increasingly varied and cerebral manner. He has also, his classicist enemies maintain, debauched the aesthetic tradition of Europe by the power of his painting personality and has made ugliness the style. When a painter fails to settle down into one matured mood, critics usually figure he hasn’t found himself. Picasso is deemed to have found himself two dozen times over and, among his special public, has made much of his reputation precisely on his restless, drastic mutations—which he silently invents in his own seasons and which only his devotees garrulously explain throughout the years. Assuming that Picasso (or anyhow part of Picasso) will be considered a master two hundred years from now, collectors and experts in the twenty-second century will have a hard time identifying a Picasso as easily as they identify, for instance, a Titian today, except for the fact that Picasso usually carefully and legibly signs his pictures with his name, often adding the year in roman numbers, plus the month and day on which the picture was completed. However, modern French experts say that all Picasso’s styles, no matter how different, and whether autographed or not, have one recognizable entity, a thing they call le signe, meaning the graphic “line” peculiar to him which they count as a signature in itself.

To the public, out of his twenty odd periods the most intelligible and appreciated are the melancholy Blue (1901-04); the picturesque Harlequins, Clowns, and Saltimbanques (1905); the sentimental Rose (1905-06); the Analytical Cubism, especially because of the fine, fertile, popular compositions featuring bits of guitars and newspapers (1909-12); and the Classic Figures (first part of the 1918-25 style). The faces and eyes of three women also date and differentiate some of his works. The almond-eyed French Fernande Olivier is visible through the romantic Rose Period. The second feminine, straight-eyed face is that of the Russian ballet dancer Olga Koklova, whom Picasso married in the Paris Russian Church in 1917. Through her, the Spaniard in Picasso was temporarily exotically influenced by the new popularity of anything Slavic; Picasso was the first of the big painters to shock aesthetes by descending to the task of making some of Diaghilev’s Russian Ballet stage sets—for “Parade,” “Tricorne,” “Pulcinella”—and the cruel, truncated décors for the ballet “Cuadro Flamenco.” The enlarging domestic influence of Madame Picasso marked the early 1920 period of gigantic female nudes, sometimes also attributed to the influence of Greek sculptures or just to big French women bathing on the Juan-les-Pins beach. A typical and tender 1923 line-edged classic portrait of Picasso’s wife eventually won the Carnegie Institute art prize in 1930. In 1927, when some experts consider Picasso terminated his many experiments with Cubism, he painted a final Cubist portrait of his son, Pavlo, dressed as a harlequin. Picasso’s marriage was ended by divorce in 1937. Since then the profile of Dora Maar—a profile usually painted with two handsome sloe eyes and both handsome nostrils visible—as marked Picasso’s recent deliberately deformed and decorative curvilinear portrait work. Dora Maar is a Yugoslav of good family who shortened her name from Markovitch and is now a well-known professional photographer in Paris.

A complete list of Picasso’s various artistic activities and periods is a lengthy affair, since it also comprises periods classified as Negro, realist, abstract, monochrome, planes, papier collé, pointillism, neo-Impressionism; a period of neo-Renoirism called “Homage to Renoir” (at which old Renoir took umbrage), classicism, heroicism, an adult or second Roseism, imitations of his own Cubism, rectilinear forms, sumptuous still lifes, portraits in which people look like still lifes of machinery, surrealism, sculpture, fantasies molded from wire, tin, or pressed paper, the so-called unheimlich or unpleasant manner, enormous natures mortes, and sleeping women. In 1933 he had a period known as the Relâche Period because during it he did not paint at all. Then came bullfights, extraordinary legendary man-animal figures, and finally the Spanish war and his much-discussed mural of the bombed city of Guernica.

The Spanish war profoundly affected Picasso, theretofore politically indifferent. His patriotism, previously visible principally in the nostalgic Spanish shadows of his Blue Period, became passionately republican. He refused to shake Italians by the hand because they were bombing his land; his broadsheet, “Songes et Mensonges de Franco,” he sold in postcard format for charity; he gave “Guernica” for propaganda to the Spanish Pavilion in the Paris Exposition; in optimism, he gave big sums to the Spanish government to buy planes; and finally, in defeat, he gave money to the Spanish refugees in the French border camps. The Spanish war furnished a terrible, trite human tableau which distracted Picasso for the first time from a preoccupation with his own visions. Since the Spanish war ended, the only show of Picasso’s paintings in Paris (at the Galerie Rosenberg, his official merchant since the first World War) displayed nearly nothing but peaceful, pretty flowers.

The first major retrospective show of his works ever held in Europe took place in Paris in the spring of 1932 at the Galerie Georges Petit. It was followed by an even larger show in the autumn at Zurich. “Picasso, Forty Years of his Art,” the current retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art here, is the biggest Picasso exposition yet assembled, covers work from 1899 through 1939, and includes three hundred and sixty items, of which one hundred and fifty are canvases. About twenty drawings and originals of book illustrations from private European collections failed to arrive at the last minute owing to the difficulties of shipping since the war. Two of the Gobelin tapestries, as well as a rug Picasso designed, are also shown. He has interested himself in modern crafts, thinks an artist should apply himself to anything stimulating that turns up, has made patterns for linoleums and tile mosaics, and at one time experimented with painting pictures in furniture paint.

According to correct Spanish usage, Picasso should (and occasionally did in his early days) sign his pictures Pablo Ruiz, which is his real name; his father’s name was Ruiz, his mother’s was the Picasso. In the Spanish formula which combines both parents’ names for the child—i.e., Pablo Ruiz y Picasso—the mother’s name is written last. It was her name that Pablo Picasso chose to be known by.

Being an iconoclast, Picasso believes painters should paint in comfort and that French studios are either too hot in summer or too cold in winter. He paints at his ease in a pair of bourgeois Paris apartments at 23 Rue La Boëtie. He and some selected paintings live in the downstairs flat, his palettes and other canvases live upstairs. Though he no longer paints exclusively at night, he is a restless man, always working at or fiddling with something, and his output is tremendous. There are thousands of Picasso canvases now in collections, private hands, or commercial circulation in Europe and America. He also owns stacks of his work which he has never offered to sell; when war broke out in September he stored some of his most valuable canvases in steel safe-deposit closets in a bank. Because he hates sweeping or having things moved, the dust in his atelier is epic, as is the confusion caused by drawings on chairs, sculpture in the corners, paint tubes on the floor, and an assortment of the pretty rubbish painters, like little girls, pick up—lengths of frayed, colored velvet, odd old boxes, stray pieces of once fine furniture from earlier periods.

Because he can never make up his mind what to do with his belongings, Picasso has gradually accumulated five different dwelling places. These he has taken on not as a well-organized man expanding into new forms of life but as somebody irresolute who has hired havens. He has a small weekend house at Le Tremblay; a country property, Boisgeloup, near the medieval Norman town of Gisors; for summer painting he recently acquired his friend Man Ray’s modern penthouse at Antibes. Picasso’s newest Paris dwelling—if he can ever decide to move in—will be on the Rue des Grands-Augustins, where several years ago he rented two floors in the magnificent seventeenth-century mansion which was formerly the town house of the Ducs de Savoie. The place is said to be a noble architectural curiosity, with broken floor levels, nests of small rooms, and sudden great salons. In anticipation of eventual residence, the painter long since installed modern necessities and what he calls his Maginot Line—a grille which cuts across the staircase leading to his front door and would prevent visitors from reaching his doorbell. Friends say he hates hearing his doorbell ring but hates it more when it doesn’t ring at all. Wherever he lives, he lives simply, eats out a lot in small restaurants, and, in the modern intelligentsia French style, as a rule not only entertains his friends but even sometimes writes poetry not at home but in a corner café. His poetry is in the association-surrealist manner.


Picasso’s domestic entourage consists principally of a chauffeur named Marcel and a factotum named Sabartés, who is a friend of long standing and a compatriot. Picasso clings to his well-worn Spanish connections, and has painted portraits of Sabartés, who, in turn, has written articles about the painter. Among those close to Picasso, his despotism, indecisions, hermetically sealed character, and energetic talents arouse a curious loyalty. The painter’s chauffeur can, in a pinch, give the dates of his master’s canvases. Today Picasso’s car, incidentally, has the look of a second-hand elderly Hispano of the kind that seats seven bolt upright, but when he bought it brand-new, at great cost, it seemed like a chariot for Picasso’s brief experiment with luxury.

As a man, Picasso is complicated and more confusing to others than he is to himself. He says that if one took the tendency one likes least in oneself and strengthened it, one would probably have one’s true character. He is indecisive and dominant; he makes promises because people seem to like promises, but he never keeps them. By procrastination he lets circumstances overtake him and solve him along with themselves. Because he is a Spaniard, he takes cruelty for granted, either in art or life. Since he is short, physical strength fascinates him. He greatly admires boxers. He himself has boxed, on two isolated occasions, with Derain and Braque, both big men and amateurs of the sport. He’s fond of animals, has owned kittens, a St. Bernard, a Mexican hairless, and an Afghan hound. His pets are run on the principle that they must look after themselves. He suffers from cold, used to wear a coat that hung to his heels, likes only the hot Spanish climate, and formerly complained that the chillier French landscape smelled of mushrooms. He is not a concertgoer; when young he said he knew nothing of music and didn’t understand it. He is kind to young painters, visits their expositions, hears their questions out, and gives no advice. He would rather be praised by them than by the art critics.

In speech he is discursive except on big topics; then he eagerly treats himself and the listener as if they were two problems entitled to a solution. Miss Toklas says his conversation is flabbergasting and that he is invariably willing to be proud, even at a sacrifice. Racially and constitutionally, he is a tragic-minded man, sad, sarcastic, with malice in speech taking the place of wit. His most-quoted phrases are usually too libellous to print. When he quarrels with friends, the reconciliations have to be arranged in the complicated Latin manner. He is a hypochondriac who has a little kidney trouble. He has small, handsome hands and feet which please him, and a rebellious, pendent lock of hair which, as the French say, cuts his forehead like a scar. His eyes are remarkable; he has a wild little right eye like a Spanish bull’s and a kinder, larger, and more human left eye. When he enters a room his brown glance seems to register everything in it in a sudden inclusive flash, like a photographer’s lens taking a group photograph. Once, when he was looking at some Rembrandt etchings, the owner said it was as if Picasso’s stare would pull the lines off the paper, the way the sun’s heat dries up the pattern of moisture on an old leaf.

There was a period in the nineteen twenties when, whirled along by the fashionableness of the postwar Russian Ballet, Picasso frequented that mixed artistic, monied, demi-aristocratic, semi-mondain Paris circle called le beau monde, where he was a welcome figure, since personalities were the rage. In the last two years, Picasso has been principally seen in public at the St. Germain-des-Prés café tables of the Flore. The small group most often seen with him include serene Paul Eluard, the surrealist poet; Madame Apollinaire, and the Cahiers d’Art editorial group, who are the painter’s art publishers. Even in a crowded café there is a feeling of dominance, abundance, and experience concentrated in the dark presence of Picasso. In his absence, what he may be doing or has done is a source of apparently stimulating speculation to his devotees. Is he painting or is he only drawing today? Did he wear his new gay tie yesterday? What did he say last week and who wrote it down—for his group first, and for posterity second? For many admirers, and with his multiple professional achievements as warrant, Picasso emanates the aura of genius in which they like to reside, though all they get out of it is proximity.

He is generous to his poor friends; he offers them gifts in kind rather than money, perhaps out of respect for Iberian standards of friendship, perhaps out of respect for cold cash. He gives hams, wine, invitations to dinner, and, above all, he gives his valuable drawings, which the friends can sell when they are in distress. Though he once refused to sign a series of new etchings because he wasn’t satisfied with it, for a poor friend with a once-signed old etching which dealers declared was a forgery, Picasso re-signed “Picasso, Picasso, Picasso” all over the margin. Because he asks—and gets—the highest prices, his enemies say he is money-mad. What he says about this is, like everything he says, full of common sense. “I am anti-commercial,” he says, meaning that he is against the merchant-inflated art market, “but I am interested in money because I know what I want to do with it.” When he sells a new picture these days the price is usually around $5,000. If its period becomes popular, the chances are that its value will increase, although not indefinitely, at the rate of a hundred per cent a decade. A good Picasso of the Harlequin or Rose Period, for instance, now brings about $15,000. Since Picasso himself says that he has painted in his lifetime about four thousand pictures, an efficiency expert could compute that he turns out an average of two pictures a week.

He says a painting has an integral life of its own when it is being worked on; thus he was not surprised when he started painting a portrait of the poet Jean Cocteau and it turned into a picture of some girls rolling hoops. “I act with paintings the way I act with things,” he says. “I make a window the way I look through a window. If the open window isn’t any good in my picture, I paint a curtain and close the window the way I would in a room.” He also says, abstrusely, that before he came along painting had been the sum of additions but his painting is the sum of destructions. When an intrepid American lady asked him what his painting was supposed to mean, he answered, “Madame, on ne parle pas au pilote.” Usually all he will say is that a painting means whatever the person looking at it sees for himself. Picasso can, if he chooses, still draw perfectly in the academic manner. When somebody said he drew better than Raphael, he said that might be all very well but what he would prefer to hear was that he had a right to draw as he pleased even if it was the opposite of Raphael. He has a detached attitude about the future of his work. Of a painting of his which he considered bad but which he had sold, he said calmly, “Time will sort all those things out. . . . A picture lives by its legend, not by anything else.” One of the strangest pictures in the Picasso legend is one belonging to the Spanish painter Zuloaga; it is a Picasso painted in his teens. It is of a pretty Harrison Fisher type of girl with pink cheeks and a stylish hat.

Picasso is his own type of genius. “Work,” he says sombrely, “is a necessity for man. Man invented the alarm clock.”

Janet Flanner

22.4.25

This AI imagery tool can transform famous paintings into different styles



GIVE MONA LISA A MOHAWK WITH DALL·E 2

A couple of weeks ago, we reported on Google’s AI tool that can turn any text into a photorealistic image. Well, it turns out Google isn’t the only tech company vying for a slice of the AI image generator pie. Meet OpenAI, a San Francisco-based company that created its first text-to-image system back in January 2021. Now, the team has unveiled its latest system, called ‘DALL·E 2’, which generates more realistic and accurate images with 4x greater resolution.

Both Imagen and DALL·E 2 are tools that use artificial intelligence to transform simple text prompts into photorealistic images that have never existed before. As explained in the video above, DALL·E 2 can also make realistic edits to existing images, meaning you can give famous paintings different styles or even give Mona Lisa a mohawk. The AI system was created by training a neural network on images and their text descriptions. Through deep learning, DALL·E 2 can identify individual objects and understand the relationships between them. OpenAI explains, ‘DALL·E 2 has learned the relationship between images and the text used to describe them. It uses a process called ‘diffusion’, which starts with a pattern of random dots and gradually alters that pattern towards an image when it recognizes specific aspects of that image.

OpenAI says its mission is to ensure that artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. The company says, ‘Our hope is that DALL·E 2 will empower people to express themselves creatively. DALL·E 2 also helps us understand how advanced AI systems see and understand our world, which is critical to our mission of creating AI that benefits humanity.’

However, despite the company’s intentions, this kind of technology is a tricky one to deploy responsibly. With this in mind, OpenAI says it is currently studying the system’s limitations and capabilities with a select group of users. The company has already removed explicit content from the training data to avoid violent, hate, or adult images being generated. They also say that DALL·E 2 cannot generate photorealistic AI versions of real individuals’ faces.

design: OpenAI