A short train ride from the center of Paris, the town of Fontainebleau is a picturesque tourist destination, widely loved for the rich forest that surrounds it and its magnificent, opulent palace. The town’s cemetery holds the remains of the writer Katherine Mansfield, among others, and its palace was contributed to by French monarchs throughout the middle ages, including the Sun King, Louis XIV.
For a few months in the summer of 1921, Pablo Picasso, his first wife, Olga Koklova, and their infant son Paulo, took up residence in Fontainebleau. The family’s time there, the artistic ferment surrounding Picasso at the time and the strange duo of masterpieces that the Spaniard created in his cramped Fontainebleau apartment are the focus of MoMA’s new exhibit, Picasso in Fontainebleau.
