A Picasso delivered by Pushkin chief still seeking something new

Irina Antonova, the 89-year-old director of Moscow's Pushkin Museum since 1961, is tiny and energetic with luminous green eyes and translucent skin. She is not a pretentious woman. In the few hours she has free after presenting one of the Pushkin's crowning jewels at Madrid's Prado as part of the latter's Invited Work program, she rolls up her sleeves and strolls the city's streets, attempting to "breathe in" the atmosphere.

Ms Antonova has brought Pablo Picasso's Acrobat on a Ball home. Considered one of the greatest works from his Rose Period, the painting is on loan to the Spanish gallery from September 17 to December 18.

Referring to the painting simply as the "the girl," Antonova says it has only left Moscow on two previous occasions: for a Picasso exhibition at the Tate Gallery in 1960, and for a 1971 anthology at the Louvre. In exchange, the Prado will loan Velázquez's Prince Baltasar Carlos on Horseback to the Pushkin for its 100th anniversary.

"Of the many marvelous paintings we have, 'the girl' is perhaps the most beloved by the public," she says of the masterpiece. "Picasso is an important figure in our country because he represents the highest and most courageous contribution of 20th-century art to the art world."

Picasso finished the painting in April, 1905, selling it to Gertrude Stein two years later. Stein later resold it to German gallery owner Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, who, in 1913, found yet another buyer - Russian art collector Ivan Morozov. After the Russian Revolution, the painting ended up among the state's collection, and has been housed at the Pushkin ever since.

"The Stalinist period was a harsh one for culture and for the country," reflects Antonova, who has witnessed more than half a century of change from behind the solid walls of a cultural institution that boasts more than 700,000 works. "But I have also seen how a great country has been unwittingly and unnecessarily lost."

The art director also has a few words for the decline of modern culture. She says she will only die in peace when she has seen "the green shoot of something new - a Picasso who transforms reality through art, through beauty and human emotion. Mass culture has devoured everything, lowering our standards. But it will pass, and we will survive it."