Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Picasso, Miró & Dalí
Three of Spain's greatest 20th-century artists have deep connections to Bar-
celona. Picasso spent his formative years in the city and maintained lifelong
friendships with Catalans. It was Picasso's own idea to create a museum of his
works here. Joan Miró is one of Barcelona's most famous native sons. His in-
stantly recognisable style can be seen in public installations throughout the
city. Although Salvador Dalí is more commonly associated with Figueres, Bar-
celona was a great source of inspiration for him, particularly the fantastical ar-
chitectural works of Antoni Gaudí.
Pablo Picasso
Born in Málaga in Andalucía, Pablo Ruiz Picasso (1881-1973) was already sketching by the
age of nine. As a young boy, he lived briefly in La Coruña (in Galicia), before landing in Bar-
celona in 1895. His father had obtained a post teaching art at the Escola de Belles Artes de la
Llotja (then housed in the stock exchange building) and had his son enrolled there too. It was
in Barcelona and Catalonia that Picasso matured, spending his time ceaselessly drawing and
painting.
After a stint at the Escuela de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid in 1897, Picasso
spent six months with his friend Manuel Pallarès in bucolic Horta de Sant Joan, in western
Catalonia - he would later claim that it was there he learned everything he knew. In Bar-
celona, Picasso lived and worked in the Barri Gòtic and El Raval (where he was introduced
to the seamier side of life in the Barri Xinès).
By the time Picasso moved to France in 1904, he had explored his first highly personal
style. In this so-called Blue Period, his canvases have a melancholy feel heightened by the
trademark dominance of dark blues. Some of his portraits and cityscapes from this period
were created in and inspired by what he saw in Barcelona. A number of pieces from this peri-
od hang in the Museu Picasso.
By the mid-1920s, he was dabbling with surrealism. His best-known work is
Guernica
(in
Madrid's Centro de Arte Reina Sofia), a complex painting portraying the horror of war, in-
spired by the German aerial bombing of the Basque town Gernika in 1937.
Picasso worked prolifically during and after WWII and he was still cranking out paintings,
sculptures, ceramics and etchings until the day he died in 1973.
