The Most Important Picasso You Cannot See Is in Iran
Bought with Iran’s 1970s oil windfall, The Painter and His Model is the magnum opus of Picasso’s Surrealist period.
The 1927 masterpiece has occasionally been seen in Tehran, and only once outside it, since Iran’s empress bought it in 1977.
Photograph: dpa picture alliance/Alamy
A multibillion-dollar collection of 20th century masterworks, including a priceless Picasso, is sitting in one of the world’s most dangerous cities — due in large part to the 1973 OPEC oil embargo. That quadrupled the price of oil, crippling the US economy and bringing windfall profits to oil producer Iran. Almost overnight, the people most able to buy great works of art weren’t in New York but the Middle East. One of the greatest of those works, Pablo Picasso’s The Painter and His Model, has been owned by Iran ever since.
The 1927 painting is arguably the most important canvas in the world that cannot be visited or seen. Described by art historian Jeremy Melius as “one of the supreme achievements” of the artist’s career, it is the magnum opus of Picasso’s surrealist period. Without its breakthroughs, art historians believe the Spanish master could never have painted his most famous Guernica, a portrait of a city under terrible aerial bombardment. In a disturbing historical echo, Tehran, now home to The Painter and His Model, is suffering the same fate. “It’s awful to think of it endangered alongside all of the city’s inhabitants,” says Melius.