Picasso Museum

PERSONAL NOTES:
First day in Barcelona took us to the Picasso Museum. This has the best early works of Picasso and it really gave us a sense of how the development of this artist. His father was an art teacher and encouraged his development from an early age; he mastered the realism of the paints of the Renaissance and beyond; doing copies of portraits by Velazquez (whose painting Las Meninas some say is the best painting ever and one which Picasso would do a study and reinterpretation in Cubist style on in his later life) and our friend El Greco. He mastered realism, dabbled in the light of the impressionists, pointillism; really experimented with many styles even though he is renown for his Cubist style. Very good museum.

The Museu Picasso de Barcelona houses 4,249 works in the permanent collection with many from his youthful and formative years. The museum occupies five palaces in Carrer Montcada that constitute one of the best examples of civil Catalan Gothic architecture. The Ruiz Picasso family came to Barcelona at the end of the 19th century, when Pablo was only 14.Immediately he started studying at the Escola de Belles Arts de la Llotja fine arts academy and began his career as a painter. The first years of Picasso’s training were fundamental to his artistic career, and he always kept his link with Barcelona. So much so that, by express wish of the artist, and thanks to the help of his secretary and friend Jaume Sabartés, it was decided that the city should permanently house a museum of his work as a young man. Pablo Picasso himself donated the series Las Meninas de Velázquez to the museum, one of his best-known and most important works.Read more