18th May 2012

Approximations to the Laboratory Exchanges – III

During the month of March we held the third Laboratory Exchanges. The contents developed during these sessions, as well as the previous ones, will be included in the speech of the project “FX Archive: from Economy zero”, within the framework of which we will also present the exhibition “Economy: Picasso” this May.

As follows we will give you a summary of the most relevant contents of the third sessions of these laboratories: Read more »

14th May 2012

Talking about Picasso’s Guernica at Montjuïc

The Generalitat de Catalunya’s Memorial Democràtic initiative has organized a series of activities, exhibitions and talks to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Civil War bombing of the civilian population.

Guernica. Pablo Picasso, 1937. Oil on canvas

Although aerial bombardment had been used in previous wars, the Spanish Civil War was the first in which the civilian population was subjected to intensive and continuous attack from the air. First in Euskadi — the Basque Country — and then all over the country, the rebel General Franco’s army and its Italian and German allies systematically bombed defenceless towns and cities behind the lines. This aberrant tactic continued during World War II and culminated in the dropping of the atomic bomb, on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Since then the bombing of the civilian population has been a common practice in almost all wars. Read more »

10th May 2012

What do we know about the Museu Picasso visitors?

The museum now knows a little more about its visitors after carrying out a one-year museum marketing study and conducting 2,102 situational interviews.
The study is based on the following sections:

• Quality measurement, differentiating between expectations prior to the visit and the quality perceived after the visit.
• Visitor profile, in order to see the type of people who visit the museum (gender, age, nationality, residence, education and career).
• Visiting habits, determining the frequency of visits, the reasons, time of stay and the composition of the visiting group.

Visitors in the museum rooms Read more »

26th April 2012

4th International Seminar on Art and Law in Malaga

On Friday 13 April the Museo Picasso Málaga auditorium hosted the fourth celebration of the 4th International Seminar on Art and Law in Malaga, a result of  an agreement between the lawyers’ Bars of Málaga, Barcelona and Paris, to organize consecutively a gathering each spring that would provide a forum for the latest developments in the field of law applied to art, and would not be limited to members of the Law career but actively undertake to share and discuss these matters with the other parties involved: museums, galleries, artists, dealers, public authorities, author’s rights agencies, etc.

Opening the seminar. ICA Malaga / Photo: Fotos: Spiral, Agencia Fotográfica

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23rd April 2012

Picasso, between words and Pictures

We are currently getting ready to stage the latest “Picasso in Words” micro-story writing competition!, which is now in its third year! The event was launched in 2010 as a joint venture between the Museu Picasso and the LletrA project at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), and each year and we are happier with the level of participation and the results.

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13th April 2012

Building the Neighbourhood with BarriBrossa

This week saw the presentation to the press of the ninth annual BarriBrossa, a festival organized by La Seca Espai Brossa that, in the words of co-director Hermann Bonnín, ‘isn’t really a festival, or an arts fair: it aims rather to be a reflection on our culture that sheds light on those avant-garde movements of the twentieth century that are still relevant the twenty-first century’.

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3rd April 2012

Approaches to the Interchanges Laboratory – II

Back in February we started the Interchanges Laboratory, which has continued this month with a block of sessions on 6, 7 and 8 March, and a third and final block on 20, 21 and 22 March.

Below is a summary of the second sessions, highlighting the most relevant inputs from these debates, talks and performative acts that offer a variety of views and interpretations of the relations between art, work, object and economy, which will be incorporated into the discourse of the project FX File: On Economy Zero, in the context of which we will also be presenting the exhibition “Economy: Picasso”.

Richard Hamilton – Just what it that made yesterday’s homes so different, so appealing? – 1992 – 26 x 25,1 cm – Metropolitan Museum, New York – © Richard Hamilton, VEGAP, Barcelona 2011

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22nd March 2012

A Collage before Collage

I first took a proper look at the Picasso drawing Man Leaning against a Wall, the starting point of the exhibition A “Collage before Collage”, when I was preparing my essay on Miró and collage. In this early work the lines drawn by the artist’s hand are complemented by a mechanical reproduction of a photographic image, which set me to thinking that it could be seen as a forerunner of the subject was dealing with in the book. However, the date of the drawing — March 1899 —was so far in advance of the discovery of collage in the spring of 1912 that I decided to put off studying it until I had finished my work on Miró and had the time to tackle it properly.

Man Leaning against a Wall

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20th March 2012

The Mystery of the Tilted Picture

If you have visited the collection of the Museu Picasso in recent years and have a sharp eye you will probably have noticed that one of the artworks slants away from the wall at an angle. Do you know which picture we’re talking about? In fact, this is one of the highlights of the collection: Motherhood, a pastel from 1903.

Motherhood. Pablo Picasso, 1903

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15th March 2012

‘Seen by…’: The Importance of Talking in front of the Artwork

Here at the museum we are starting a new season of ‘Seen by…’, our special programme of guided visits to the collection led by rather out-of-the-ordinary guides: we ask professional people from very different backgrounds to talk about their responses to the works on show, in terms of their particular links to their own creative endeavour and their visual and cultural imaginary. Architects, writers, circus artists, dancers, painters, photographers, scientists, poets, designers, art critics, film and theatre directors and more… a wide range of creative talents from the most varied fields have shared their perspectives and points of view, enabling us see the works with new eyes and break away from the historicist approaches that so often shape the way we engage with Pablo Picasso’s art and at times tend to alienate rather than bring us closer to it.

Seen by… Sol Picó: a vision from the world of dance Read more »