picasso

People Party votes against launching committee and international congress on the events, which inspired Picasso’s most iconic work

There will be more exhibitions still at the Picasso Museum in 2018, including one analyzing Picasso’s time spent in Paris

Meanwhile, the Miró Foundation, the CCCB and MACBA received fewer museum-goers than the year before

The collection examines his friendship with the Catalan poet and photographer Josep Palau i Fabre

The collection features artists like Dalí, Miró, Picasso, Tàpies, Brossa and Duchamp

Ceret and Perpignan open exhibitions dedicated to the works of the two influential artists

Barcelona’s Picasso Museum will add 1,150 m² for exhibitions this 2017. This new area will be located on the second floor of the ‘Palau de les Finestres’, one of the five buildings composing the museum, which has been undergoing refurbishment. The Picasso Museum currently occupies five large town houses on Montcada street, in Barcelona’s old town, dating from between the 13^th and the 15^th century. During the presentation of the museum’s programme for this year, the Picasso Museum’s new director, Emmanuel Guigon, also announced that this year’s major exhibition will be ‘Picasso Portraits’, co-produced with London’s National Portrait Gallery, which will be displayed from March until June. There will also be three smaller exhibitions this 2017, some of them to be hosted in the restored area at the ‘Palau de les Finestres’.

Picasso’s attraction to Romanesque art is to be definitively unveiled in an exhibition dedicated to him at the National Art Museum of Catalonia (MNAC). The display will open its doors next Thursday and is co-organised with the Musée National Picasso-Paris. The exhibition includes forty works by the artist lent by the French museum, which are being added to the collection of Romanesque art from the MNAC. According to one of the exhibition’s curators, Emilia Philippot, the display demonstrates the “echoes of simplicity and primitivism” of Romanesque art in certain Picasso creations. Picasso, like other artists of his time, was attracted by the Romanesque, identified with the “childhood of art”. His interest is proved in the exhibition with various unpublished documents, such as correspondence and books belonging to the artist.

Barcelona turns into a moving image hotspot again for over three weeks with the 14^th edition of LOOP, a festival dedicated to video art. Since 2003, it has provided a platform for both emerging and well-known international video artists to get together, with curated exhibitions taking place around the Catalan capital. Not only is it an event exhibiting high-quality video art, but also hosts workshops and other art events related to the moving image; as is the case again this year, with LOOP featuring over 400 artworks, 58 exhibition projects and 28 activities carried out through a budget of 77,000 euros. In this year's Festival, which is titled 'Faraway, so close', the main themes are 'Beyond the Black Box' and 'Back to the Black Box', exploring the connection between cinema and video art.

The exhibition can be visited from the 26th of May until the 4th of September. It displays artworks created by Picasso between the 24th of October 1968 and the 25th of March 1972, and first shown in Paris only a year after their completion in 1973, when the artist was still alive. “The last Picasso, the engraver”, is shown in this exhibition, one who “experimented freely” and had an “overflowing life force”, according to a statement released by the museum. The artist created these works at his home in France, and in them, he focuses on the same subjects he always used, such as the painter and the model, and focuses especially on the female nude. Picasso also pays homage to several other artists in the series, including Goya, Manet, Raphael, Rembrandt, Velázquez, and especially Degas. The Museum calls the collection a “final tragicomedy, rich and complex”.

The National Portrait Gallery in London, in collaboration with the Barcelona Picasso Museum, has set up one of the most comprehensive collections dedicated to Picasso´s portraiture ever created. In London, more than 75 works of art will show each of the artist´s phases and varying techniques, a testament to “his unique vision”. Exhibition curator Elizabeth Cowling noted that it has “never ever been done before” to show the artist´s work in a museum “dedicated entirely to portraiture”. Furthermore, this is the first time that the London museum will feature portraits of figures that aren’t British. The exhibition will later be held in Barcelona, where the collection will be extended by five pieces, one of which will be lent by the Art Institute of Chicago for the first time.

The National Art Museum of Catalonia (MNAC) reviewed what its 2016 exhibitions would consist of, although the showings unofficially begun in December of 2015. The star exhibition of the season will be ´Picasso and Romanesque Art´, a joint venture with the Picasso Museum in Paris. Besides this, other exhibition centred onLuis “el Divino” Morales, Renaissance painting, 20^th century photography and features on several Catalan artists, such as Lluïsa Vidal and Ismael Smith, will complete the MNAC’s agenda for 2016. The MNAC’s director, Pepe Serra, celebrated that the museum is finally “starting to have a normal planning rhythm for a museum of its size” which will allow the MNAC’s calendar to synchronise with “other international museums”.

A painting of Picasso’s ‘blue period’ with a hidden portrait at the back of the canvas of Picasso’s friend and patron Peter Mañach, has been presented this Friday in London for the first time in 30 years. ‘La Gommeuse’ is a portrait of a naked Parisian woman made in 1901 and the image of Mañach on the reverse was discovered only 15 years ago. Now the canvas will be auctioned at Sotheby's New York with a starting price of $60 million. The painting dates back to Picasso’s ‘blue period’ while living in Paris with Mañach. Artworks of Andy Warhol, Claude Monet and Vincent Van Gogh also will go under the hammer.

Barcelona's Picasso Museum unveiled on Friday the first exhibition in the world analysing how Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dalí artistically admired and influenced each other, despite their political differences. The Catalan museum has opened the most awaited temporary exhibition of the season, which will run until 28 June. 'Picasso/Dalí. Dalí/Picasso' showcases 78 works of these two giants of 20^th century art, including paintings, drawings, collages, sculptures and carvings. They tell the story of their artistic relationship and how their works evolved by setting many parallels between the two. The exhibition also includes 33 documents such as some letters that Gala and Salvador Dalí sent to Picasso, which had only been on show once, in Paris.

The "La Caixa" Foundation has opened Moche Art from Ancient Peru. Gold, Myths and Rituals, an exhibition to be hosted at CaixaForum in Barcelona until the 7th of June. The exhibition includes 200 pieces of pre-Incan Peruvian art from the collection of the Lima-based Larco Museum. According to its curator Ulla Holmquist, the exhibition is conceived "as a route to understanding the Andean worldview through art". The launch of the event coincides with the recent opening of Barcelona's Museum of World Cultures, which hosts a permanent exhibition of more than 500 pieces from the artistic heritage and traditions of Asia, Africa, the Americas and Oceania. The Museum of World Cultures occupies two Gothic palaces located in the Born neighbourhood, just next to the Picasso Museum.