Tickets $18 or ACS Pass
Watch creativity unfold before your eyes in THE MYSTERY OF PICASSO (1956), an extraordinary encounter between Pablo Picasso and acclaimed French director Henri-Georges Clouzot, best known for The Wages of Fear and Diabolique. With cinematography by Claude Renoir and music by Georges Auric, this 78-minute documentary brings audiences into the artist’s working process as drawings and paintings emerge, evolve, and undergo surprising transformations. Filming through specially prepared translucent paper and using time-lapse techniques for the oil paintings, Clouzot makes Picasso’s images seem to spring directly onto the cinema screen—an intimate, exhilarating opportunity to witness a great artist thinking through his brush.
Winner of the Special Jury Prize at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival, The Mystery of Picasso is a landmark collaboration between painting and cinema, capturing the discoveries, revisions, and daring changes that lie behind a finished artwork. Its significance rests in making the act of creation itself the drama: every new line or splash of color can transform everything that came before. Critics have celebrated the experience: “A uniquely thrilling work” — Kathy Fennessy, Video Librarian; “An unforgettable experience for both art-lovers and film enthusiasts” — Film Culture. For art lovers and movie lovers alike, it offers a rare chance to watch imagination take shape.
