Picasso Lithographer

New Exhibitions at Museums of Barcelona

The Picasso Museum is holding an exhibition on artists’ responses to the Franco dictatorship in Spain. It takes as its departure point a series of engravings made by the artist in 1937 entitled The Dream and Lie of Franco.

Montjuic offers explorations into the past: MNAC is giving an exhibition on the 19th-century French Realist painter, Gustave Courbet while the CaixaForum is presenting an archaeological exhibition on the ancient Mexican site of Teotihuacan, whose fame rests on its enormous step pyramids.

If you fancy a bit of thought-provoking photojournalism, then you mustn’t miss the exhibition on at the CCCB featuring photographs taken by Gervasio Sanchez and showing the parallels between forced disappearances under oppressive regimes in South America, the Middle East and Spain.

Gustave Courbet and Realism at MNAC Barcelona

The French Painter Gustave Courbet rocked the art world in the 19th century. Through his brush, reality entered painting: Realism was born.

With the aim of tracing his footsteps in our country, Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya (MNAC) is exhibiting, until July 10th, a selection of his most outstanding works, most of which are being shown in Spain for the first time. The exhibition reveals Courbet’s influence on Catalan painting in the period, most of all through the work of Ramon Martí Alsina, the man responsible for the renewal of painting and who introduced Realism to the Spanish art scene.

It is an ambitious exhibition, produced by the MNAC, that invites the public to gain greater in-depth knowledge of Realism and at the same time discover its precedents and its legacy, in a show that deliberately goes beyond the temporal limits of this movement:  from the Spanish Golden Age, with paintings by Murillo, Ribera and Velázquez, to contemporary art, through the work of Antoni Tàpies, one of the most universal Catalan artists.

U232 Hotel offers you an Art Weekend in Barcelona, a special package including accommodation at our 4 star hotel, with a welcome drink and breakfast, and the Barcelona Art Ticket which entitles to visit the 7 largest museums of Barcelona: MNAC, MACBA, Museu Picasso, Fundació Joan Miró, La Pedrera, Fundació Antoni Tàpies and CCCB.

Museu Picasso’s Knowledge and Research Centre

With the smell of fresh paint in the air and the future library’s shelves still empty, the Museu Picasso has presented its Knowledge and Research Centre, a new building located just next to the medieval mansions that have, until now, housed the museum’s activities.

The building, which received funding to the tune of €6.7 million, will open soon but gradually, with school activities the first to move there and then the library and archives, which will be on the second floor.

The first floor of the centre, designed by the architect Jordi Garcés, will have a series of four multipurpose spaces intended for workshops, talks, seminars and master’s-degree courses. The basement will have facilities and storage spaces for non-artistic objects, among other things.

Thanks to the new building the Museu Picasso will now have 13.000 square metres at its disposal. The plan is to re-organise the spaces freed up with the launch of the new centre.

In addition, the museum will gain a new entrance on Plaça de Jaume Sabartés, though the ticket offices will not be moved from their current location for the time being. This will help to reduce crowding on Carrer de Montcada.

Location -> c/ Montcada 15-23

Dies de Dansa Festival in Barcelona

Núñez i Navarro Hotels, with 9 hotels in the center of Barcelona, sponsor the Dies de Dansa Festival Barcelona from 1 to July 5, 2010.

Dies de Dansa is an international contemporary dance festival in urban spaces. It is a free annual cultural project born in Barcelona, which is part of the GREC Festival de Barcelona. During five days buildings, streets, parks and plazas flood with life in this encounter between dance, urban space and community.

Dies de Dansa takes place in different points of Barcelona, such as the Center for Contemporary Culture of Barcelona (CCCB), the Joan Miró Foundation, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona (MACBA), the Picasso Museum; as well as in the cities of Mataró, Sabadell and Sitges. The daylight programme consists on the presentation of short performances that artists elaborate specifically for each place, with the participation of over 25 national and international companies.

Dies de Dansa also programmes Workshops for the community, a series of free dance workshops suitable to professionals and amateurs, and the workshops Dance within the Family, which throughout experimentation, creativity and research, stimulates the emotional bonds in a fun way.

Secret Images. Picasso and Japanese Erotic Prints

The exhibition “Secret Images. Picasso and Japanese Erotic Prints” which is open until 14 February 2010, the fruit of some unique research by the Museu Picasso, puts nineteen Japanese prints that belonged to the artist on display for the first time. The exhibition, with over a hundred works, establishes a dialogue between these prints and Picasso’s own erotic engravings.

Although at some point in his life Picasso maintained he had no interest in Japanese art, it is known the painter often changed his ideas.

The exhibition introduces us to the phenomenon of Japonism, which arrived in Barcelona at the end of the 19th century. Picasso’s masters, like Rusiñol, Cases and Nonell discovered Japanese art first hand and were seduced by its flat images.

In Paris too, many of Picasso’s contemporaries were influenced by these images and Japanese aesthetics. In fact, the artist did a sketch for a poster advertising a play with the actress Sadayakko, which revolutionised the artistic atmosphere of the time.

It is known that Picasso owned a Japanese print in 1911 and never got rid of his collection, which contains sixty examples from when Japanese printing was at its height, at around 1700-1800, and its key exponents.

As with these prints, Picasso did not hesitate in showing naked bodies in all their splendour, sketching the genitals of the lovers and showing explicit sex scenes. He even contorted the bodies if necessary.

Secret Images. Picasso and Japanese Erotic Prints | From 05/11/2009 to 14/02/2010
Museu Picasso -> C Montcada, 15 – Ciutat Vella

Seduced by Kees Van Dongen.

The “Kees Van Dongen” exhibition, which has also been shown in Montreal and Monaco and is now on at Barcelona’s Museu Picasso until 27 September, takes the artist, regarded as one of the best representatives of fauvism, out of this oblivion.

In fact, the artist’s more interesting works were painted long before. It was in Paris that the leitmotif which would continue throughout the subsequent phases in his artistic development first appeared: women.

First, he drew them, with strokes reminiscent of Toulouse-Lautrec’s style, and began to show a special interest in prostitutes, cabaret performers, dancers and circus artists. The world of popular arts was the only thing that interested Van Dongen, who shunned the great traditional themes of painting.

Eroticism and female seduction, the central themes of his paintings, combined with the painting’s material, colours and strokes, especially during Van Dongen’s fauvist phase. It led him, in the end, into the fold of the German expressionist group, Die Brücke.

Even the exotic element he found in his trips to Spain and Egypt is expressed in his women’s portraits: belly dancers, mulatto women and Seville dancers all feature in Van Dongen’s prolific creations.

Later on, the artist stylised his models, to satisfy his clients with more slender figures. Nevertheless, you only need look at the Tango of the Archangel to see the provocative element remained.

Exposició Kees Van Dongen | From 11/06/2009 to 27/09/2009
Museu Picasso: C Montcada, 15 – Ciutat Vella

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