Pablo Picasso’s reputation as one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century is often attributed to his unparalleled creative force and capacity to reinvent himself. He worked with a wide range of media, rejecting the limitations of a distinctive style and clearly defined artist persona. Picasso’s choices in subject matter, form, and medium were often informed by his friends and his creative circle, which included prominent visual artists, photographers, filmmakers, musicians, dramaturges, writers, and art critics. The presence of these figures not only enriched Picasso’s artistic and personal life but also contributed to making him the most mediated artist of his time.

Intimately framed through the lens of Picasso’s friends, the documentaries in this series examine the artist’s life within his community and how he used photography and film to craft his image for a global audience. His collaboration with French filmmaker Henri-Georges Clouzot for The Mystery of Picasso (1956) led to a groundbreaking art documentary that uses visual storytelling, sequencing, and music to unpack and dramatise the creative process of painting. François Lévy-Kuentz’s On the French Riviera with Man Ray and Picasso (2021) takes Man Ray’s short film La Garoupe (1937) as a starting point to depict a summer holiday shared by Picasso and his friends two years before the onset of World War II.

This screening programme is curated in dialogue with The Hong Kong Jockey Club Series: Picasso for Asia—A Conversation.