The wonderful Picasso exhibition

We'd heard about an exhibition of Picassos works in Shanghai that was said to be impressive : https://www.museumofartpd.org.cn/en/exhibitiondetail?id=180 . It's our first destination on our first night in town.

It turns out to be not just impressive but outright brilliant.

The pictures displayed on walls painted by Paul Smith the British fashion designer. A refreshing change from the whitewashed walls approach that galleries love.

Forget stuffy. This exhibition of 80 of the artists works is fun.

Crowds of young Chinese are out enjoying themselves.

Some rooms are wittier and more successful than other others. The room with pink walls and peach floors was close to drowning the pictures with sensory overload.

A Picasso of a baby owl is something I could live with.

This is a TikTok generation. Out on the Bund thousands of love struck twenty somethings are happily photographing each other against the backdrop of the old concession era buildings. At midnight the place is still humming but, as the cars are mostly electric , it's much, much quieter than a European city. In fact the quietness is positively eerie. There are lots of Russian tourists ( as in thousands and thousands of them enjoying visa free travel ) but very few western Europeans, even fewer Americans and almost no Japanese or Singaporean visitors in the hotels. Almost no one speaks English ( even in the big hotels ) and communication is now done on translation apps.