2023: A year to celebrate Picasso

Picasso was born in Málaga in the late 19^th century and from a young age his artistic endeavours were encouraged by his father, a professor of art and painter himself, and his mother who eagerly preserved all of the young artist’s first drawings and passed down her now-famous family name ‘Picasso’. The former family home now houses the Birthplace Museum (known as ‘Casa Natal’) operated by Fundación Picasso, a small museum and artistic organization dedicated to preserving and promoting Picasso’s work. The foundation works in conjunction with the larger Museo Picasso Málaga situated in the 16^th century Buenavista Palace and has a collection of over 250 Picasso works, many of which were donated by Picasso’s family and descendants.

At the age of 10 Picasso and his family moved to A Coruña where the artist spent his formative pre-teen years and hosted his very first art exhibition at the age of just 13. The Casa Museo Picasso is nestled away in the family’s former home and has replicated much of the original décor as well as displaying some of the artist’s early drawings and reproductions of his father’s work.

Following the tragic death of Picasso’s younger sister Conchita, the family relocated to Barcelona where his father began teaching at the Academy of Fine Arts and convinced the academy to accept his 13 year old son. Picasso famously completed the academy’s entrance exams in record time and, whilst he may not have been the most enthusiastic student, Picasso forged long-lasting friendships during his time at the academy and created a great many sketches and works. The Museu Picasso, burrowed in the La Ribera neighbourhood of Barcelona, was opened in 1963 with great input from Picasso himself. It was the first Picasso museum to open, and the only one opened during the artist’s lifetime, housing 4251 of his works. 

At the age of 16 Picasso moved to Madrid, at the behest of his father and uncle, to attend the San Fernando Royal Acadey of Fine Arts, the finest art school in the country. Again Picasso showed a dislike for formal education, but the city inspired him in many other ways and he continued to work on his sketching and paintings privately. Madrid is famously considered the art capital of Spain and its ‘Golden Triangle’ of art museums, the Museo Nacional del Prado, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía and the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum house some of the greatest collections of Spanish and European art. The Museo Reina Sofía is home to one of his most famous works ‘Guernica’.

After moving to France Picasso spent little time in his home country and after the civil war he never returned (citing his dislike of Francisco Franco’s regime), but Spain was never far from his heart and he was deeply aware of the internal conflicts affecting the country in the early 20th century. Following the tragic bombardment of the Basque town of Guernica, Picasso was inspired to create his painting of the same name as a tribute to the lost lives and criticism of Franco’s collusion with other rising fascist regimes in Europe. The giant monochrome painting shows the horrors of the bombing via surrealist and cubist imagery and is considered to be the most moving and powerful anti-war painting in history by many art critics. Picasso’s efforts to highlight this event were lauded my many Basques and a number of his works are displayed in Bilbao’s Guggenheim Museum.