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Daily except Tues 9.30am-6pm, Thurs till 8pm; March & April till 5.30pm; ?5.79, on Sun ?4.27; Mº Chemin Vert & Mº St-Paul . Opened in 1986, the Musee Picasso occupies a magnificent classical seventeenth-century mansion, Hotel Sale, at 5 rue Thorigny and houses the largest collection of Picasso's work anywhere. The paintings, however, are not the artist's most impressive - the museums of the Cote d'Azur and the Picasso gallery in Barcelona are more exciting. Nor are they even the most recognizable - the museum relies on temporary exhibitions to cover the periods least represented: the Pink Period, Cubism, the immediate post-war period and the 1950s and 1960s. However, they are the most personal, as the collection is made up of works Picasso chose to keep. The numerous sketches, studies, paintings, scultpures and drawings supply what many art-lovers yearn for: an unedited body of work providing a sense of the artist's growth and insight into the person behind the myth. The paintings of his wives, lovers and families - the portraits of Marie-Therese, Claude Dessinant Francoise and Paloma, for example - are some of the gentlest and most endearing. The portrait of Dora Maar, like that of Marie-Therese, was painted in 1937, during the Spanish Civil War when Picasso was going through his worst personal and political crises, a period when heightened emotion and passion produced some of his most inspired work. The museum also displays numerous paintings that the artist bought or was given by his contemporaries, as well as African masks and sculptures, photographs, letters and other personal memorabilia - items that were in the possession of the Spanish-born, Paris-based artist at the time of his death in 1973 and seized by the state in lieu of taxes owed. There are also a cinema, reference library and pleasant outdoor cafe
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