Museu Picasso

Montcada 15-23
Barcelona
Catalunya
93 319 63 10

http://www.museupicasso.bcn.es

Type: Museum
Addmission Fee: Entry 5 Euro, free on the first Sunday each month.
Hours: Tues.-Sat. 10 am-8 pm, Sun. 10 am-3 pm

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El Born and artists go hand-in-hand, thanks in no small part to the establishment in 1963 of the world’s first Picasso museum, the 15th-century Palau Aguilar on Carrer de Montcada. The museum has since expanded to claim the neighboring Palau del Baró de Castellet and the Palau de Meca, both 17th-century constructions. As the long lines outside foretell, only the Prado Museum in Madrid sees more visitors each year. The museum is focused on the work of Picasso’s formative years from 1890 to 1905, much of which he spent in Barcelona. What the museum lacks in the way of Picasso’s later years, it more than makes up for with an extensive collection of over 3,400 pieces tracing the artist’s evolution from a young schoolboy in Málaga, as evidenced by an early portrait of his parents, up to his ascension as international icon. Correlating the artist’s work with his life is made easy by the informative placards placed outside each series of rooms, which begin with his works as an understudy to his father, an art professor who moved his family from Málaga to La Coruña and, finally, Barcelona. The next series of rooms, marked by a concentration of Cézanne-like still-life pieces, leads up to Picasso’s instructive first visit to Paris, which inspired his somber Blue Period, as displayed in rooms 11-14. Conceding the obvious, the next three rooms signal a departure from the early Picassos, the series of 58 paintings from 1957 in which the artist reinterpreted Velázquez’ masterpiece Las Meninas with cubic absurdity. The last of the rooms is dedicated to the artist’s late years with displays of photographs and a sizable collection of 141 ceramics from his Rose Period donated by his widow Jacqueline.