Picasso had his first exhibition in Paris in 1901.
The exhibition took place at Ambroise Vollard’s gallery in June 1901, when Picasso was nineteen. It was organized as a joint presentation with the Basque painter Francisco Iturrino and gave the young Spanish artist his first major opportunity to show work in the French capital.
Picasso had first visited Paris in 1900 for the Exposition Universelle, but that visit was not the same as holding an exhibition there. After returning to Paris in 1901, he worked intensely in a studio on Boulevard de Clichy and produced many of the paintings shown at Vollard’s gallery. Contemporary accounts describe roughly sixty-four paintings in the exhibition.
The timing was important because Picasso was beginning the Blue Period, following the death of his friend Carlos Casagemas. His Paris show helped introduce his work to dealers and collectors, even though he remained largely unknown internationally. A later exhibition of his blue paintings at Berthe Weill’s gallery in 1902 is sometimes confused with this first Paris exhibition, but the earlier Vollard show occurred in 1901.