The Mystery of Picasso

The Mystery of Picasso (French: Le mystère Picasso) is a 1956 French documentary film about the painter Pablo Picasso, directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot. It shows Picasso in the act of creating paintings for the camera. Most of the paintings were subsequently destroyed so that they would only exist on film, though some may have survived. The film begins with Picasso creating simple marker drawings in black and white, gradually progressing to full... More

The Mystery of Picasso (French: Le mystère Picasso) is a 1956 French documentary film about the painter Pablo Picasso, directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot. It shows Picasso in the act of creating paintings for the camera. Most of the paintings were subsequently destroyed so that they would only exist on film, though some may have survived. The film begins with Picasso creating simple marker drawings in black and white, gradually progressing to full scale collages and oil paintings. It won the Special Jury Prize at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival and was shown out of competition at the 1982 Festival. This famous art movie wasn't the first documentary showing Picasso painting images on glass plates from the viewpoint of the camera. The Belgian documentary film Visit to Picasso (1949) did it almost seven years earlier.

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