31st January 2012

Farewell to Pepe Serra: assessment of a phase

When our director Pepe Serra said goodbye to the team at the Museu Picasso he told us: ‘We have done ten years’ work in five years.’ What follows is a brief summary of some of the projects carried out during his time as director.

· Research and development of exhibitions that contribute knowledge and added value.

“Feasting on Paris. Picasso 1900-1907” (2011). Self-Portrait with Palette, Picasso, Paris, 1906 |  “Picasso Looks at Degas” (2010). Read more »

26th January 2012

The Making of “Picasso 1936. Traces of an Exhibition”

The putting together of “Picasso 1936. Traces of an Exhibition” was a very special challenge. There we were, an art museum, proposing a show containing no original work of any kind: in the words of the curator of this radical venture, Sílvia Domènech, it was a question of creating an exhibition of documents rather than with documents, in order to conceptualize the significance of the Picasso Exhibition held in Barcelona, ​​Madrid and Bilbao in 1936 through analysis of the archives.

Interview with Silvia Domenech, curator of the exhibition Read more »

30th December 2011

The Museu Picasso’s 2011 in images

The task of choosing the most representative images of this year that is coming to an end was far from easy. Between us, we have worked on a lot of projects! Exhibitions, activities, research and restoration, education, registrar, library, publications, communications, administration, visitor services… it’s a long list. Here, then, is just a taste of what the museum has done in 2011.

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16th June 2011

Picasso and non-traditional techniques

If the invention of the lead tube as a container for oil paint enabled the Impressionists to get out of the studio and work in the open air, capturing nature at first hand, the use of industrially manufactured paint provided the ultimate freedom to the artists of the early twentieth century.

Under the title From Can to Canvas, an international colloquium was held in Marseille last May at which restorers and conservators from Europe and America got together to discuss non-traditional painting materials and techniques, putting forward an alternative, complementary vision of the history of art based on the study of the creative process.

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9th May 2011

Dream and Lie of Franco: beyond Picasso

Removing a work of art from the context in which it is normally found can have surprising consequences, and the exhibition “Cartoons on the Front Line” at the Museu Picasso is a clear illustration of this.

The central core of the exhibition is the series of etchings and sugar-lift aquatint with scraper Dream and Lie of Franco, prints by Picasso from the museum’s collection.

Dream and Lie of Franco [plate 1, state II]. Paris, 8 January 1937. Etching and sugar aquatint on copper plate, printed on Montval laid paper

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3rd March 2011

Opening the doors of the new building

On Saturday, the 19th March, the new Centre of Knowledge and Research of the Museu Picasso will offer an open doors day, within the framework of the “We open the Born neighbourhood to culture and commerce” event.  The building has been constructed with the idea of it becoming a space of local and international reference in the study and research about Picasso and his artistic and social context.  The centre has been conceived as a dynamic space for promoting research, reflection and critical debate, and therefore, to generate new knowledge.

Exterior and interior of the building. Photo: Josep M Llobet

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21st January 2011

Top 17 projects of Museu Picasso for 2011

Here we present you a list of the projects we will especially be working on this year that has just started.  In recent weeks the whole team of the museum has been proposing, revising, debating, budgeting, and fixing dates for the list of projects for the immediate future. Here are the top 17, but they are many other working lines and open programmes, some structural, some in specific moments, which the museum is working on.

This year the museum is growing with a new building that will be the Centre of Knowledge and Research.  This will allow us to give a major boost to the areas of debate and study around the work of Picasso and the relation between Picasso and Barcelona, a field in which there is still a lot to research and to discover. Read more »

18th October 2010

Picasso looks at Degas: a unique exhibition

On Thursday 14 October the Museu Picasso opened the exhibition “Picasso Looks at Degas”, a co-production by the museum and the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts.

This project, curated by Elizabeth Cowling and Richard Kendall, is the result of four years of research by the two historians, the former a leading specialist in the work of Picasso and the latter an expert on the work of Edgar Degas. The scholarly endeavour that has gone into preparing the show is evident in each and every one of the chosen works, in the depth of the premises and the seriousness of the theses put forward, and also in the sense of fascination and the openness with which the curators have engaged with the project.

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7th October 2010

Presentation of the 2010-1011 Programme: a lot of work done and a lot still to do!

This week we presented our programme for the 2010-2011 season, which we are particularly pleased with because it embodies the results of the Museum’s evolution and the main objectives we set ourselves three years ago:

• To promote research and knowledge from the Museum itself as a basis on which to undertake projects;

• To continue to review Picassian narratives and the critical reception of the artist’s work in the area of Barcelona and Spanish.

This programme is a proposal of greater complexity than in previous years, and most of the projects have been generated in-house with the aim of continue to make the Museum a space for debate and participation. Read more »

16th November 2009

Doctoral Thesis on Picasso’s Iconography

On Monday, November 9, the doctoral thesis ‘Picasso’s Iconography between 1905 and 1907. The Influence of Pompeian Painting’ by Conchita Boncompte, and supervised by Dr. Lourdes Cirlot, was read at the Universitat de Barcelona.

The thesis sets out to demonstrate the influence of Pompeian painting on the work Picasso produced between 1905 and 1907, an influence that was supported by and engaged in dialogue with Picasso’s milieu and his experience of Catalan Romanesque from his stay in Gósol. The highly stimulating presentation of this study, which runs to more than 700 pages, and promises to open up new avenues of research, has already prompted many to wish that it be made accessible to a wider readership.

It would be an impossible task to summarize here the wealth of research and visual information put forward in the session, and we have therefore asked the author herself to give us a brief extract:

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