In this landmark exhibition, Michelangelo Pistoletto, a pioneer of Arte Povera and 2025 Nobel Peace Prize nominee, debuts fifteen new works from his iconic Mirror Paintings series in direct dialogue with Cubist masterpieces by Pablo Picasso.
Bringing together these two titans of modern art for the first time, Picasso/Pistoletto explores how their revolutionary practices redefined perspective and reshaped the course of visual culture. Shaking the foundations of Western painting, Picasso’s invention of Cubism marks one of the most radical revolutions since the Renaissance. Where classical painting relied on single- point perspective to create illusion and distance, Cubism overturned this system to reveal the object in its entirety. By fragmenting forms and presenting multiple viewpoints simultaneously, Picasso collapsed depth, pressing objects toward the picture plane and the viewer. The result was not illusion but spatial presence: objects rendered tangible, weighted, and tactile. Picasso’s redefinition of pictorial space laid the groundwork for generations of artistic innovation, turning the image into a powerful tool of perception.
Where Picasso dismantled the fixed viewpoint of earlier styles, Pistoletto transcends perspective into a fourth dimension of infinite space and time. Evolving from his earliest works in 1960s Italy, Pistoletto’s contemporary Mirror Paintings combine life-sized photographic figures, applied through silkscreen printing, on reflective stainless steel. Fixed images anchor the work, while the mirrored surface captures the shifting presence of viewers and the surrounding world. Everyday gestures take on an enigmatic
quality, as art and life flow seamlessly together across a dynamic, participatory surface.
By collapsing the boundary between representation and reality, Pistoletto transforms perspective into a living process where past, present, and future converge; static figures recall memory, reflections embody the present, and infinite combinations of interactions are captured on the mirrored surface. Each encounter turns the viewer into a co-author of the work. In continuing Cubism’s revolution, Pistoletto replaces illustrated space with infinite space, evolving from the singular vision of the artist into a
shared, collective process – an artwork never the same twice.
Picasso/Pistoletto positions the two artists, not in contrast but in succession, revealing a continuous evolution of visual thought. The exhibition celebrates the transformative power of perception, where Cubism’s revolutionary flattening of space meets the Mirror Paintings’ immersive reflection of reality. Here, perspective is not only defined – it is experienced.
“Separated by decades but united in their revolutionary spirit, both Picasso and Pistoletto understood that art’s greatest power lies not in representing the world as it appears, but in revealing new ways of seeing and understanding it.”
– Helly Nahmad
Picasso/Pistoletto, 13th October 2025–12th December 2025 Helly Nahmad Gallery
