In what year did MoMA hold Picasso’s first major retrospective? The Museum of Modern Art held it in 1939.
The exhibition was titled Picasso: Forty Years of His Art and opened at MoMA in November 1939. It surveyed four decades of Picasso’s career, from his early Spanish training and Blue and Rose periods through Cubism, Neoclassicism, Surrealism, and his politically charged 1930s work.
The retrospective was organized under Alfred H. Barr Jr., MoMA’s influential founding director and a major advocate of modern European art. It helped establish Picasso as one of the defining artists of the modern era for American museum audiences.
The exhibition continued into 1940 and was presented in conjunction with the Art Institute of Chicago, which explains why some references describe it as a 1939–1940 retrospective. The year asked for is 1939 because that is when the MoMA exhibition began. Guernica was among the important works associated with this period of Picasso’s American reception.