Picasso Museum exhibits three paintings from Madrid's Museo del Prado

'Greco, Velázquez, inspire me! Picasso invites the Museo del Prado' is the new name of the new exhibition at Barcelona's Picasso Museum, after receiving three paintings from Madrid's Museo del Prado museum.  

Visitors are now able to see the new paintings by artists who were relevant to the Spanish painter's artistic career for various reasons in a room dedicated to his beginnings. 

Antonio Muñoz Degrain was his teacher, Diego Velázquez and El Greco were artists the young Pablo Picasso admired while he was staying in Madrid from 1897 to 1898 as a student at the Special School of Painting, Sculpture and Engraving. Their influence can be found in his late work. 

The three works are used to explain how the young Picasso began his career while deciding between an academic education and creative freedom.  

Picasso would skip classes to visit the Museo del Prado, to copy works by Velázquez, Goya and El Greco. 

Later, in the southern municipality in Catalonia of Horta de Sant Joan, Picasso wrote "Greco, Velázquez, inspire me!" in a drawing, thus inspiring the name of the room in the museum dedicated to him in the Catalan capital. 

Addition to collection 

Another temporary addition to the museum's collection is 'Child in bed or Claude with mumps,' an oil painting from 1948 of Picasso's son Claude lying sick in bed because of mumps. 

The painting, given by Banc Sabadell bank, adds to the museum's collection of paintings from the second half of the 1940s.  

The artist's works in those years were marked by the birth of his children Claude and Paloma, the result of his relationship with French artist Françoise Gilot.