Picasso Museum's 2025 season celebrates Sala Gaspar and Alfred Jarry

Iconic Barcelona gallery Sala Gaspar and French playwright Alfred Jarry will be the focus of two major exhibitions during the Picasso Museum's 2025 season.

The museum will also transform the presentation of its permanent collection – redesigning the visitor experience – release the previously unpublished 'Picasso and the Surrealist Magazines' and introduce a new 'Friend of the Picasso Museum' membership card.

The Barcelona City Council-owned Museu Picasso presented its program for the 2025 season on Tuesday.

Pablo Picasso and Sala Gaspar 

'Pablo Picasso and Sala Gaspar (1955-1973),' curated by Aitor Quiney, will run from June 26 until October 26.

The exhibit explores the connections between the Spanish painter and one of Barcelona's most iconic 20th-century exhibition spaces – Sala Gaspar – through the friendships woven between Picasso, his wife Jacqueline Roque, gallery owners and cousins Joan and Miquel Gaspar, and their respective partners Elvira Farreras and Ena Alba.

On display will be promotional material from the various Picasso exhibitions held at Sala Gaspar, along with the works themselves.

The exhibition will look at how Picasso's work was received during the Franco dictatorship and tell the story of key moments in his relationship with the Gaspars, such as the arrival of his 'Las Meninas' at the Picasso Museum.

Ubú Painter – Alfred Jarry and the Arts

'Ubú Painter – Alfred Jarry and the Arts' will run from November 27 to April 26, 2026, exploring the extensive impact and influence of Jarry’s work on art and literature from the late 19th century to the present. 

Curated by museum director Emmanuel Guigon, not only will it feature works by Jarry in various formats, like books, magazines, and drawings, but also examine the lasting significance of the French playwright's legacy.

Through additional works by contemporaries – and later artists such as David Hockney, Robert Wilson and William Kentridge – the exhibition highlights the connections between Jarry and artists he was close to, such as Henri Rousseau, Paul Gauguin, Pablo Picasso, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec and Joan Miró.

The exhibition will feature loans from public and private collections from across Europe and the United States.

In autumn 2025, the 'Picasso and the Surrealist Magazines' exhibition will open, showing that Picasso was not only a surrealist painter, but also a surrealist poet.

Tell the story

The museum is also set to revamp the presentation of its permanent collection from June.

"We won’t invent new paintings, but we want to make the visit more pleasant and include more works. We need to tell the story more," said Emmanuel Guigon, director of the Picasso Museum of Barcelona.

"More works and more context,” he added. 

Changes are also being made to the layout of the museum's ground floor and reception area, to improve the visitor experience, making it more "pleasant and attractive." 

The Picasso Museum Foundation will launch a new prize, the Sabartés Prize, with two categories, one academic and one artistic.

Finally, a new 'Friend of the Picasso Museum' card, will grant exclusive access, discounts, and other perks at a cost of €40 a year.

Podcast

To learn more about Picasso, including his time in Catalonia as a young artist, listen to the podcast below.

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