El Blog

With more than 50 years of history, the Museu Picasso is still a museum to be discovered.  This is so because, despite the fact that most of the works in the collection have belonged to it for some time, the views of the conservators and researchers, and of the visitors themselves, manage to renew in a permanent way the knowledge on them and the perception that they can have.

A good example of this, of the wealth, the singularity and the versatility of the collection of the museum, can be found in the new Guide to the Collection that was published a few weeks ago and that replaces the publication that with the same aim appeared at the end of the nineties.

The printing of the cover

This is a project that began its creative process six years ago and ended last December. During this time, the museum itself has undergone transformations of very diverse natures that explain, in part, why the final result is somewhat different from the original idea of the book that was thought up between 2008 and 2009. Despite the vicissitudes and the changes of orientation, the guide that the visitors can acquire in the bookshop of the museum is an especially attractive book with its own character.

Pagegs 78-79 & 98-99

The scientific coordination of the project was carried out by Malén Gual and Eduard Vallès, to whom we owe the conceptualisation of the structure of the book (with the collaboration of Juan José Lahuerta), the definition of the contents to be developed, the selection of the works presented and the writing of a good part of the texts. Furthermore, they were also the editors of the other authors, nine in total, who, in choral format, actively participated trying to transmit through their writings, and for all types of audiences, the keys for understanding the nature of the works and their complexity.

The machines functioning

The design of the book has been done impeccably by Sandra Neumaier, who was responsible for conceiving it after the evaluation of three graphic proposals that the museum had requested from different professionals. Sandra chose stylish fonts, specifically thought for making the reading of the texts easy, and achieved a magnificent balance between sobriety, beauty and functionality. The choice of offset paper with an especially agreeable touch is also, without doubt, a very good decision, despite the difficulties that an option such as this one poses when printing. Despite this, the reproduction of the works has achieved a level of quite notable fidelity, thanks to the work of the professionals who have worked on the photo-mechanics and printing.

The printing of the insides

The new guide of the Museu Picasso wasn’t born with the intention of being an exhaustive and/or reduced biography, or shallow treatment of the work of Picasso, but, simply, one that proposes to the reader an approach to the artist through some of the most notable pieces the museum possesses. The reader/visitor can get closer in a singular way, as if in reality they were doing a free tour around the successive galleries, without the need for doing a sequential interpretation.  The works have been grouped in chapters, although they follow a chronological line, they do however get away from the habitual classification in periods of the trajectory of Picasso, and, on the other hand, they make the synthetic story prevail of the successive transformations that he underwent as an artist. Reading the guide constitutes, in a certain way, a passionate journey through the process of formation of a creative genius and one who was extremely fruitful. The pages of the guide are not only thought for accompanying the public on their visit, but also aspire to becoming a testimony and a record of their experience in the museum.

Malén Gual and Marta Jové
Curator of the collection and head of Publications

Related links
 Guide to the Collection in the museum shop
Love at First Sight: how we select the catalogue’s cover