Image: Left: Edvard Munch, The Murderess (La asesina), 1906, oil on canvas. Munchmuseet, Oslo. © Photo: Munchmuseet / Ove Kvavik. Right: Pablo Picasso, Woman with Stiletto (Mujer con estilete), Paris, 19–25 December 1931, oil on canvas. Musée national Picasso-Paris, gift of Pablo Picasso, 1979. © Grand Palais Rmn (Musée national Picasso-Paris) / Mathieu Rabeau. © Sucesión Pablo Picasso, VEGAP, Madrid, 2026
The Museo Picasso Málaga will open "Munch-Picasso" on 30 October 2026, an exhibition the museum presents as the first to place Edvard Munch (1863–1944) and Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) in dialogue. On view until 28 February 2027, it gathers more than a hundred paintings, drawings and prints by two artists the museum regards as essential to understanding the birth of modern art.
The show does not argue that one painter shaped the other. It instead follows the concerns the two held in common, among them love and desire, illness, death, loneliness and existential anguish, and proposes that both changed the language of art by making emotional experience one of the main forces behind their work.
Women are a recurring presence in this shared imagery. According to the museum, they appear as figures of admiration and desire but also as complex, ambiguous presences that carry the emotional and psychological strains running through each artist's world. A second strand turns to modern social life: cafés, cabarets and bohemian circles served Munch and Picasso as places of observation and experiment, from which each built a new image of the contemporary individual.
Two paintings reproduced on the museum's exhibition page illustrate the pairing. Munch's "The Murderess" (La asesina), a 1906 oil on canvas measuring 110.5 by 120.5 centimetres, belongs to the Munchmuseet in Oslo. Picasso's "Woman with Stiletto" (Mujer con estilete), painted in Paris between 19 and 25 December 1931, is held by the Musée national Picasso-Paris.
The exhibition is curated by art historian Paloma Alarcó, who for more than three decades, until May 2026, was chief curator of modern painting at the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, where she organised exhibitions on both Picasso and Munch. In 2026 she also curated "Picasso. Raíces bíblicas" at Burgos Cathedral. She sits on the Museo Picasso Málaga's programming committee, executive council and board of trustees, and held research fellowships at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown in 2010 and the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles in 2016.
The project relies on the special collaboration of the Munchmuseet in Oslo and the Fundación Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso (FABA), with sponsorship from Fundación Unicaja.
Its opening forms part of the programme marking the museum's 23rd anniversary, which runs from 23 to 31 October and includes workshops, concerts and a lecture by Michael FitzGerald on the challenges of curating Picasso. On the exhibition's first day, a study session brings together Alarcó; Trine Otte Bak Nielsen, curator at the Munchmuseet; and María Jesús Martínez Silvente and Eugenio Carmona, professors at the University of Málaga.
