Malaga: Pablo Picasso

At the end of Calle Granada, taking Calle San Agustin to no. 8, we arrive at Palacio de Buenavista: the Picasso Museum.

From 1907 onwards, the artist began his experimentation with his most characteristic style of representation, which would see him as its greatest exponent in the future, cubism. Initially classified under Analytical Cubism, the paintings are made with earth tones, and the figures are deconstructed with complex geometric shapes.                

Cubism for Picasso took on modifications and variations over time, incorporating the art form of collage and the human figure into his paintings: the art of synthetic cubism.

This is the form of expression that Picasso used to create his stunning works until around 1919, before returning to neoclassical works and thus to primitivism for the next ten years, in stark contrast to Cubism.

In the 1930s, he was commissioned by the Republican government for the Spanish pavilion at the Paris Expo of 1937, the work inspired by the German bombing of the Basque city Guernica. This was to remain his signature work.

During the Second World War, Pablo Picasso remained in Paris under German occupation and harassment by the Gestapo due to his closeness to communism’s ideology. Yet, despite the difficulties, he continued to pursue his art.

With Francoism in Spain, Picasso remained far from his homeland, staying in the south of France. He remained in exile for many years without ever setting foot on Spanish soil until 1975, when after the dictator’s death, he returned to Madrid and with him his masterpiece Guernica (first to the Prado Museum and then to the Reina Sofia, where it can still be admired today).

Because he was so deeply rooted in Malaga, Pablo Picasso always had the desire to be able to exhibit his works in his native city, despite living in France for so many years.

In 2003, this museum was dedicated to him, collecting over 230 of his works donated by his daughter-in-law and grandson, Christine and Bernard Ruiz-Picasso.

This is a place to visit and to blend with Picasso’s art, possibly grasp his artistic evolutions, experiments, loves and dramas. By observing his paintings, one can understand how colours and shapes succeeded in representing political and social situations that all the countries in the world were experiencing at the time.