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…
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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.
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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.
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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.)
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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
© Author A. Lee 2008.
Also an artist who creates beautiful spiritual and symbolic art.
Further reading on this site on Picasso
Minotauromachy : Picasso’s Master print
The other museums of Paris (Picasso Museum)
The artist’s mother
Abstract Art Defined
Abstract Art Defined ii
Further reading on this site on Surrealism
Rene Magritte’s Surrealism : Meticulous, Witty IllusionsThe life of Joan Miro
Video of Joan Miro paintings/
Salvador Dali’s paintings
Salvador Dali’s art surrealism at its best and weirdest
Modern art movements
Best art museums in Europe
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