In the biography of an artist, the context in which the works that served as the starting point of his career were produced are data that arouse great curiosity. In the case of Picasso we know him: the beginning of his career took place in A Coruña, where he lived with his parents and his sisters Lola and Conchita between 1891 and 1895. We associate Picasso with Malaga, Paris and Barcelona, ​​but the Galician future of the artist is also an important part of his training. To remedy this lack and assist as witnesses to the artist’s first steps, today his house in A Coruña is also a museum, and from March to June 25 the exhibition Picasso Blanco is held at the Museum of Fine Arts in A Coruña at the blue memory, focused on the Galician years of the artist. The exhibition has been curated by Antón Castro, Malén Gual and Rubén Ventureira.

The apartment where the Ruiz Picasso family settled is located at Calle Payo Gómez 14, on the second floor of a building faithful to the 19th century architecture of A Coruña, with a front gallery, a rear gallery and a fabulous curved staircase that begs to be photographed. insistently. We are in the center of the city, a few meters from the Méndez Núñez gardens and the refined and commercial Plaza de Lugo, with its characteristic modernist buildings. On the other hand, when the Ruiz Picassos moved there in 1891, their house still had views of the countryside.

The reason for this move from the sunny and Mediterranean Malaga to the rainy and Atlantic A Coruña is found in the working circumstances of the head of the family, José Ruiz Blasco, also a painter like his son. When he lost one of his Malaga jobs – that of curator at the Municipal Museum of Malaga – he decided to accept the position of professor of drawing at the Provincial School of Fine Arts in A Coruña. And there he traveled with his family to start the course in 1891. The large amount of luggage of the time exposed in the museum, inside what is known as the “room of the trunks”, wants to recreate the long boat trip that the family from Malaga to Vigo and, from there, by train to their final destination: A Coruña.

The people in charge of the guided tour of the house distinguish between “Pablo” and “Picasso”. The last name is reserved for the now adult artist, whose work we all know, while the first name is given to the budding artist, formed during his Coruña years. His academic learning in subjects focused on drawing (ornamental and human figure) was obtained at the same school where his father taught, since, in 1892, the young Pablo entered it at the age of eleven, without having turned even the legal age.

The house is also a small museum of reproductions of paintings by the young Picasso, of which there are 29 works along with four by his father. The techniques are diverse: drawings, charcoal, watercolors and oils. Those who want to go through the Galician stage of the artist turning the pages of his A Coruña notebooks can consult the facsimile edition, entitled Carnet Picasso La Coruña. 1894-1895, published by Gustavo Gili in 1971 and still available in antiquarian bookstores. Some of the satirical drawings on the bad climate of A Coruña appear in them, according to Patrick O’Brian comments in his biography of the painter.

Seeing these reproductions, which do not stand out for their quality, hanging on the walls, we do learn something essential about Picasso: his passion for pigeons, which he inherited from his father. In bullfighting slang –another field of interest for the painter from Malaga–, we could consider that José Ruiz gave his son the alternative in a canvas in which Pablo was the one who finished the legs of a dove, or at least that is what biographers of his such as John Richardson. José Ruiz Blasco already had vision problems that made it difficult for him to finish his work: seeing the skill with which his son had painted those details, he handed her the brushes.

This is not the place to venerate the objects that the artist touched and saw throughout his childhood, since the museum mainly seeks to recreate the time in which the Ruiz Picasso lived so that visitors can glimpse what their daily life would be like. The basins and urinals of various types are striking, which indicate that having a urinal next to the bed was commonplace, although the Malaga family was one of the first to have a complete bathroom with a cistern in their home.

Other objects that remind us of the life of the child Picasso are the quinqués, the flaneras in the kitchen, the perfume atomizers with a knob and a jar of castor oil, a popular purgative of the time hated by children for its taste. bitter.

The piece of furniture in the house that does have an authentic relic character is the wooden stool with arms located in front of the easel in the father’s study. There the boy Pablo did sit down to paint his first realistic oil paintings.

The room of his sisters, Dolores and Conchita, with walls with plant motifs and toys on a shelf, reminds us of the tragic death of the second sister from diphtheria in early 1895, an event that led to the family moving to Barcelona, ​​where José Ruiz He obtained a teaching position at the Llotja School. The girl was buried in the Coruña cemetery of San Amaro, next to the sea.

To follow in the footsteps of the young artist throughout the city, the A Coruña City Council has drawn up a Picasso itinerary that includes places of high symbolic value for the painter. One of them is the Tower of Hercules, probably the main icon of the city, which was not lost on the young Picasso, since he painted it in oil on panel. Another place of pilgrimage for mythomaniacs should be number 20 Calle Real, where, in February 1895, Picasso opened his first exhibition in the window of what was then a furniture store.

There he showed two oil studies of heads, praised by the newspaper La Voz de Galicia in its review of the exhibition: “They are not badly drawn, the color is right and the intonation is quite good.” The person who wrote the review saw in Picasso a future renowned artist, since he dared to affirm that “this way of starting to paint shows very good dispositions for pictorial art in the child artist.” On the other hand, his father, who also exhibited in A Coruña on more than one occasion, received some bad reviews.

And to imagine him playing bullfighting with his friends Constantino Sardina and Antonio Pardo in front of his study center –now converted into the Eusebio la Guarda institute–, we have to go to the Plaza de Pontevedra, a few meters from the family home. There it remains, in the shape of a dove created by the artist Ferreiro Badía, a sculptural memory of the days when Picasso acquired a steady hand trying brushes and charcoal.

Casa Museo Picasso A Coruña. https://www.coruna.gal/