Picasso Museum Malaga

November 24, 2008

Pablo Picasso ’s art is found in museums in all countries around the Mediterranean sea, and around the world for that matter. However, it is an interesting fact that Picasso had always wished for his art to also be shown in his birthplace, Málaga, Spain.

That wish has come true, thanks to a collaboration between Picasso’s heirs and Andalucia. It is officially called the ‘Museo Picasso Málagaas’.

It is not just an ordinary museum either. It is housed in ‘Palacio de Buenavista’, a 16th century building with Andalusian architecture, located in the historic center of Malaga. It actually was opened by the king & queen of Spain. In short, a true, artistic fairytale…

Fruit Bowl and Guitar, c. 1927-29 (gi…

Pablo Picasso

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The main contributor to the museum is Christine Ruiz-Picasso, who donated 133 artworks. Her son Bernard Ruiz-Picasso added another 22. Their donations form the collection of the museum. Additional works are on loan.

The museum does host some true top works like ‘Mother and Child‘ (1921-1922), ‘Still Life with Guitar on a Circular Table’ (1922), ‘Woman with Raised Arms’ (1936), ‘Bather’ (1971) and so on.

The majority of the artworks in the collection had not been seen in public prior to the museum opening a few years back.

Examples of Picasso’s revolutionary innovations, as well as the wide range of styles, materials and techniques he used, are represented and displayed in the 12 halls of the museum. The art gallery also includes 4 other halls for temporary exhibits. Completing the museum facilities are an assembly hall, a library, an educational department and an investigation and a promotion center.

To purchase the museum catalog, click here:
Collection Museo Picasso Malaga 1901-1972

And El Picasso de Los Picasso: 27 Octubre 2003-29 Febrero 2004

Picasso Museum Malaga

Joie de Vivre

Pablo Picasso

The Latest In a Series of Picasso Museums

As mentioned earlier, there are quite a few museums in the Mediterranean region dedicated to the Picasso, including

Museu Picasso, Barcelona;
“>Musée National Picasso, París;
Musée Picasso, Antibes;
Musée national Picasso La Guerre et la Paix, Vallauris

We all know Picasso to be one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century, and everyone of these Picasso museums honor him being an artist whose techniques plus styles changed the modern art.

Recent Picasso Art Exhibitions in the Picasso Museum Malaga
The museum just completed a show called ‘Picasso as seen by Otero II’. The everyday atmosphere in Picasso’s studio, with his family and friends, is one of the main themes running through this fresh selection of images by the photographer Roberto Otero which the MPM will be showing next summer. With these new photographs, the Museum, which exhibited the first selection in the summer of 2006, will reveal Picasso’s more private, personal sphere, with the aim of giving the visitor a different look at the man behind the myth.

Roberto Otero (Buenos Aires, 1931 – Palma de Mallorca, 2004) is one of the photographers who had constant access to the more private side of Pablo Picasso during the last years of his life, at the artist’s chateau in Mougins, in the south of France. Otero’s archive comprises more than 1500 images, which the MPM acquired in late 2005 and which are an exceptional testimony to Picasso’s daily life and the creative process that went into his work during the 1960s.

Other recent Picasso art exhibitions include ‘Picasso. Object and Image’ (begin ‘08), an exhibit which examined the artist’s working methods in different media and how they influenced each other, often bringing into the process the challenges of shapes and materials.

Nude and Still-life, 1931

Pablo Picasso

The Museums explains the purpose of this exhibit of Picasso’s work:

“From his first Cubist work onwards, Picasso was interested in exploring the complex relationships between reality and its representation in art. This interest was expressed in the wide variety of materials and techniques that he used during the course of his career, each one with its own potential, limitations and challenges which Picasso aimed to respect but also to subject to his aesthetic requirements.

In this respect, Mourlot, the master printer who produced almost all of Picasso’s lithographs, stated: “He looked, listened and did the opposite to what he learned, and it worked”.

Picasso created art based on elements as unusual in his time as found objects, sheet metal and cast-off materials.

“I do not look, I find”, he declared. In the everyday forms of a ceramic jug, bicycle handlebars or a simple fork Picasso discovered new motifs from which to create his works. Picasso. Object and Image offered a reflection on these discoveries.

As a young man Picasso had shown an interest in ceramic but it was not until after WW II that he started to work intensely in ceramics. “

To establish interrelations between the different techniques in which the artist worked, Picasso’s ceramics were juxtaposed with works produced in other media, revealing relationships between both subject-matter and treatments. Picasso said: “People have said for centuries that a woman’s hips are shaped like a vase. This is no longer poetic; it has long since become a cliché. I take a vase and make a woman out of it. I take the old metaphor, let it work in the opposite direction, and thereby give it new life”.

What’s on Now in the Museum

Worth noting is that the Picasso Museum Malaga also shows other leading figures of the 20th century art, such as Max Ernst, on show today in ‘Beyond Paintings, featured till March 2009. Max Ernst was described by André Breton as “the most magnificently tormented mind that could possibly exist”

Ernst’s overwhelming imagination, deluded, exalted and rebellious, produced a transgressive body of work that underwent constant experimentation and which was inhabited by fantastical creatures and impossible situations.

“My wanderings, my restlessness, my impatience, my doubts, my beliefs, my hallucinations, my rages, my revolts, my refusal to submit to any discipline, even those of my own invention… none of these have succeeded in creating a climate conducive to a calm, serene body of work.” (Max Ernst about his own work in 1970.)

Portrait of Dora Maar, c.1937

Pablo Picasso

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Ernst lived a life of searching and constant experimentation, leading to a body of work that is one of the most significant contributions of its time to art and, in particular, to the Surrealist movement. Surrealism, like Dadaism before it, was the response of a generation of artists to Western society’s cult of rational thought which, in their opinion, had led to the horrors of the First World War.

The Surrealists believed in the importance of the unconscious, fantasy and dreams as a way to achieve a deeper level of truth. One of the foremost of these young artists was Max Ernst.

Conclusion

The Picasso Museum in worthy of visiting, year round, as visitors will be delighted by both the permanent collection, and most often, the significant exhibitions by other famous artists.

Details of the Picasso Museum
Palacio de Buenavista
Open everyday except Monday
c/ San Agustín, 8
29015 Málaga, España
www.museopicassomalaga.org
Tel: (34) 952 127600

About the Author, Artist Astrid Lee

Minotauromachy – Picasso’s Master Print

March 1, 2008

By A. Lee

Artistic genius Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) achieved supremacy in every medium he worked in: painting, ceramics, sculptures, drawing and print making. As one of the most prolific artists at all times, he made a large volume of works in every medium.

Printmaking has been central in Picasso’s artistic life. He is one of the finest and most prolific print makers of all time. Today, I want to talk about ‘Minotauromachy’ which is often cited as the most important print of the twentieth century.

It is interesting to observe that often artists make their most astounding works at times that their personal lives are at a low. Picasso was no exception. 1935. Not quite yet divorced from his first wife Olga, and his new girl friend Marie-Therese already pregnant. It was without a doubt a difficult personal year for Picasso.

And so that year became a special artistic time for Picasso. He stopped painting early that year, and devoted himself to print making and writing poetry. It was also the year that Picasso produced what would become his most-famous print, the Minotauromachy — meaning ‘Minotaur’s battle’.

This large, intricate etching of a provocative scene is just brimming with Picasso’s personal symbolism. It is a multi-layered, universal allegory of good and evil, violence and innocence, suffering and salvation.

A multitude of actions are taking place in a small space. The artwork depicts a bull-headed Minotaur (Picasso’s alter ego throughout the ’30s). The animal is silhouetted against sea and sky. He stretches out one arm towards a young girl who stands calm in the face of his approach. She holds a lit candle in one hand and a bouquet of flowers in the other. While the Minotaur appears threatening at first glance, he actually seems to shield himself from her candlelight.

In between them, is a terrified horse (a symbol for Marie-Thérèse) who rears on his hind legs. The horse has a gash in its belly, which seems to be caused by the Minotaur. Across the horse’s back lies an unconscious female matador. Her (pregnant?) body is half-naked and her face looks exactly like Marie-Thérèse. She holds a sword between the Minotaur and the horse. Also in the artwork is a man on a ladder against a wall, who observes the scene. His head is turned around facing out, giving him a crucified Christ-like appearance (a symbol for Picasso) Two young girls with doves (symbol of peace), looking through a window, also observe the scene.

The most important symbol is of course the minotaur itself. The minotaur stands for a oneness of man and bull. It appears increasingly in Picasso’s etchings of the 1930s. This being represents the duality in all men and in the artist himself; the opposing forces he wanted to put together as person and as artist.

Guernica, c.1937

Pablo Picasso

Two years later, Picasso adopts much of the print’s imagery for his world famous mural painting ‘Guernica’ – his outraged response to the Spanish civil war. The answer to ‘Why did Picasso paint Guernica?’ is kept for another article…

About Artist Astrid Lee

Astrid Lee makes spiritual art, for purposes of healing and personal growth and of course, visual contemplation! Review her work at http://www.astridlee.com. She is a frequent writer for http://www.eArtfair.com/blog , an online fine art magazine.