Picasso

- Last week, before going to Marseilles to see our family, EL PAIS, the Spanish newspaper to which I am subscribed, offered a free guided tour of the Picasso Museum in Malaga on October 29 to those subscribers who wanted to participate in a contest answering a simple question about the Museum. We would visit the  Diálogos con Picasso. Colección 2020-2023

The day was perfect for me because I was going to be in Malaga on the 29th; Our plane would arrive in Malaga on the 28th and we had already planned to spend the night there before returning to Granada, so I decided to participate in the contest.

Picasso Museum - Palacio de Buenavista

A few days later, EL PAIS phoned me to tell me that they had given me two free tickets for the guided tour.

Lucky me!!

They told me to be at the door of the Picasso Museum ten minutes before 4 in the afternoon. We were a small group of about ten people.

Our guide introduced himself and explained that her main goal was to show us why Picasso was a genius of modern art. She also explained that the Museum had changed the display of Picasso's works of art last year in June, the year of the pandemic, so although some of us had already visited it before, he said that we were going to see different paintings in the museum and in a different perspective.

The visit lasted an hour in which she paid special attention to only 7 or 8 paintings. She explained them in a very detailed way, making us discover what Picasso represented in those paintings and how he did it: colours, shapes, perspectives, positions, points of view ...

Our guide also explained that the titles of Picasso's paintings are not important. It's what you see in his paintings that really matters.

She stopped at this portrait-

Portrait of a woman with her arms raised, 1936

Then she asked us: - What can you see in this portrait? Do you see a woman dancing or do you think she is moving her hands in a threatening way? Does she look angry or happy? Is she crying, screaming? Why is she wearing a Mexican hat? Can you see the fish, the moon, her long black eyelashes, her long manicured nails, her blue dress?

She said that people could see all of these things when she showed them this painting during her guided tours, especially children!

 

Her final explanation was about this painting:

Mosquetero con espada -1972

Again many questions were asked: - What can you see? Who is the person pictured here? Is he a bullfighter, swordsman, bandit, musketeer, black warrior, masked? What does he have in his right hand? What kind of hat is he wearing?

There are no correct answers again. All the possibilities can be true.

But the most surprising thing was when she told us that Picasso had painted this incredibly vivid portrait when he was 91 years old!

 To sum up, it was a great visit. Our guide was a true Picasso expert and she seemed to really enjoy her work. The same as I enjoyed her explanations and the whole visit to the Museum.