In 1971 when the Réattu Museum organized a second Picasso exhibition (the first had taken place in 1957), the Spanish painter decided to offer the city 57 drawings. This sealed a deep relationship between Arles and the artist.

This exceptional donation is proof of Picasso’s love of Arles, founded in his Andalousian passion for the corrida (bullfight) and the attraction of the “phantom” of Van Gogh. The Arlesian woman first painted by Van Gogh appears in Picasso’s work from 1912 on, and he painted the arena in Arles in 1960.

The Réattu Museum conserves the 57 drawings of the Picasso donation, offered by the artist two years before his death.

They represent a painter’s diary, transporting us to the heart of Picasso’s work, and can be divided into three themes : The Arlequin, The Painter and his model, and The Musketeer, the painter’s final self portrait as a kind of Spanish soldier-bullfighter.

The museum also possesses two paintings by Picasso : the Portrait of Maria (the artist’s mother) painted in 1923 and donated by Jacqueline, Picasso’s last wife, in 1985; the Portrait of Lee Miller as an Arlésienne, painted in 1937 (the same year as Guernica), inspired by Van Gogh’s Portrait of Madame Ginoux..