New Zealand is about to host its largest-ever gathering of Picasso works. From October 10, 2026, to February 1, 2027, Auckland Art Gallery will run 'Picasso: Designed by Paul Smith', an exhibition of 80 pieces drawn from the Musée National Picasso-Paris — the biggest number of the Spanish master's works ever shown in Aotearoa at once.
The twist is who's designing the hang. British fashion designer Sir Paul Smith has laid out 15 rooms with bold colour, lighting and patterned walls riffing on Picasso's own visual language — stripes and harlequin prints. A bullfighting room blazes fiery red against black-and-white drawings, while a section devoted to his late reinterpretations of Manet's 'Luncheon on the Grass' comes with artificial grass underfoot and vivid green walls.
The works span the major chapters of Picasso's career, from the melancholy Blue Period of the early 1900s — when he was broke in bohemian Montmartre and grieving a friend's suicide — through the warmer Rose Period and the fractured geometries of Cubism. There are paintings, prints, drawings, ceramics and sculptures, including 'Portrait d'homme' from the Blue Period, the 1932 Cubist-inflected 'La Lecture', and a preparatory study for his landmark 1907 work 'Les Demoiselles d'Avignon'.
Senior curator Dr Sophie Matthiesson frames the show through the artist's tangled personal life: six defining relationships, each visibly shifting his style. Early portraits of his Russian ballet-dancer wife Olga Khokhlova are classically composed; when the marriage soured, his turn to surrealism brought far harsher depictions. Later muses — teenage mistress Marie-Thérèse Walter, avant-garde photographer Dora Maar, and painter Françoise Gilot, the only woman to leave him — each left their mark on his canvases.
Animals get a look-in too. Bulls, owls, doves and goats recur throughout his work, often based on real pets like Esmeralda the goat, who shared his home in Cannes, and an injured owl he nursed back to health in Antibes.
For travellers, this is a rare reason to book an Auckland trip that doesn't rely on weather or beaches. Summer in New Zealand falls in the middle of the exhibition window, so a gallery visit can sit neatly alongside harbour-side eating, Waiheke Island wine tours or a drive north to the Bay of Islands. Given Picasso originals rarely travel to the Southern Hemisphere in these numbers, the show is likely to draw crowds from across the region — pre-booking tickets and timing a weekday visit would be wise.
The exhibition runs at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki until February 1, 2027.
