The curtain has closed in Hong Kong on Pablo Picasso's mammoth masterpiece Parade and the huge treasure might not be on display again for 20 years, exhibition organisers said on Monday.

The 10.5m tall and 16.2m wide work, painted in 1917 on a ballet stage curtain, attracted more than two million visitors during the two weeks it was on display in a downtown shopping mall.

The painting, on loan from the Pompidou Centre in Paris, cost $1.28-million to display and was unveiled on October 12 by French President Jacques Chirac during a four-day tour of China.

"It is so fragile it can only be shown rarely so the next time it will go on display could be in 20 years," said a spokeswoman for the arts promotion programme of the International Finance Centre, the mall that hosted the exhibition.

Dozens of workers overseen by a five-strong team of Pompidou Centre conservation experts spent most of Monday lowering Parade from its purpose-built gantry and carefully rolling it around a huge storage cylinder.

The painting will be loaded into an air-conditioned container ready to be flown back to Paris on Wednesday, the spokeswoman said.