2023 is an exceptional year at the Museu Picasso, which is experiencing a double celebration. That of the fiftieth anniversary of the death of the artist, one of the most influential creators of the 20th century, and that of the sixties of the inauguration of the equipment on Montcada street, created at the express wish of Picasso. It will celebrate it behind closed doors, with two shows of international punch included in the official Picasso year program: the one currently dedicated to Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler and a face-to-face Picasso-Miró co-organized with the Fundació Miró that will take place from October at both venues. But the party will continue beyond its walls, expanding through a city, Barcelona, ??with which the artist maintained an idyll all his life, and vindicating his own history and that of his funds in Madrid.
“From now on we will be able to look at the city with different eyes again, the eyes of Picasso”, announces Emmanuel Guigon with regard to Cartografia Picasso, a publication on the artist’s relationship with Barcelona, ??since he settled in 1895 with 14 years with his family, until his death in 1973. Based on this guide, those points that had special relevance for the creator of Gernika have been identified and will be marked with an indicator totem with detailed information.
Beyond this street route, throughout the year Picasso will be present at the Libraries of Catalonia (theatrical performances, puppet shows, poetry recitals…), the Col·legi d’Arquitectes, which will host the exhibition Picasso, Urbanism and the synthesis of the Arts, the Palau de la Música or La Filmoteca, which has digitized five films, among which are such little-known rarities as Picasso 136 by Jordi Vall or Picasso Nostre by Maria Lluïsa Borràs.
As for the exhibition programme, in addition to the two large shows mentioned in the international celebration of Picasso’s year (42 exhibitions in 38 museums in Europe and the United States), the Picasso will host an exhibition of Carmen Calvo (Valencia, 1950) between May and September. , an artist who, through collage and the redefinition of discarded images, has built a powerful poetic imaginary. Absent for years from Barcelona’s museums, the show will oscillate between a mini-retrospective and works made expressly based on Picasso. In summer, the French Hélène Delprat (Amiens, 1957) will show a work that relates the artist to the Civil War.
The museum will also invite different contemporary artists to intervene in the center’s permanent collection. Right now you can already see Nicasso. The film, by Carlos Pazos, and in the coming months Frederic Amat will join, with an installation inspired by The Three-Cornered Hat, by performance artist Orlan, who in 2022 presented the series Crying Women at the Picasso in Paris are angry, where he offers a critical look at the portraits of Dora Maar, and the photographer Pilar Aymerich.
The Barcelona museum will also collaborate with different Catalan museums, such as the Maricel de Sitges, and will be present in Madrid, inaugurating the PhotoEspaña festival in April with a double exhibition on the history of the creation of the museum, on the one hand, and on the other , the collections that it treasures from Lucien Clergue, Brigitte Baer and David Douglas Duncan. Likewise, already in September, Diego Velázquez will participate in the exhibition and the symposium invites Pablo Picasso. Finally, he will arrive in Paris, where he will participate in an exhibition that explores the friendship of the man from Malaga with Paul Éluard, at the Saint Denis Museum of Art and History.
