Johan Popelard presents himself as the main production of the 2024 cultural program dedicated to the theme of Metamorphosis and, in particular, to the relationship between Giulio Romano and Ovid's poem that inspired the construction of Palazzo Te from 1525 to 1535.

Set up at Palazzo Te from September 5, 2024, to January 6, 2025, produced by the Fondazione Palazzo Te in collaboration with the Musée national Picasso-Paris and the artist's family, the exhibition presents to the public about 50 works by the Master symbol of the 20th century, including some paintings exhibited in Italy for the first time.

In 1930, four hundred years after the completion of the Camera dei Giganti in Mantua, Picasso creates a series of engravings dedicated to Ovid's Metamorphoses: a fascinating proposal that offers a direct dialogue with Giulio Romano and the Renaissance paintings of the palace. But behind the artist's confrontation with mythological tradition lies an extraordinary adventure.

Emigrated to France in 1900, marked by the police and the Academy of Fine Arts as a foreigner, anarchist, and avant-garde artist until 1944, Picasso was initially welcomed by a small group of marginal poets. It is in poetry and the world of poets that he finds the means to overcome the obstacles related to his foreign status. The artist masterfully navigates through the multiple tensions of French society using metamorphosis as a strategy. He becomes, at an aesthetic, personal, and professional level, a Mercury-like artist that very few critics, especially in France, manage to decipher.