small_Pablo Picasso contemplando_1056x680.jpg

thumbnail_Pablo Picasso contemplando_1056x680.jpg

Pablo Picasso contemplando_1056x680.jpg

Interview with Eugenio Carmona

So far, so near

## Keep the light on 

In 2015, actress [Kristen Stewart](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristen_Stewart) had a tattoo done with a motif from Picasso’s mural *Guernica*: the lamp with a light bulb and a crown on a black background. The story is curious to say the least. The previous year this fragment of the great painting had been sported by the female character she played in the film [Clouds of Sils Maria](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/clouds_of_sils_maria) (2014). A temporary tattoo, a black rectangle with an eye in the negative space whose pupil resembled a light bulb, adorned the actress’s forearm. It was the iconic lamp in the upper center of the composition of Picasso’s *Guernica*.    

![Picasso bajo la piel_1056x680](https://www.museopicassomalaga.org/cms/uploads/Picasso_bajo_la_piel_1056x680_e1b416fe81.jpg)
Detail from the mural Guernica, executed by Pablo Picasso in 1937. © Archivo fotográfico Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía

Stewart has often recounted that when the image was removed after filming, she felt that something was missing from her arm and decided to get a permanent tattoo. She has sometimes also explained that wearing it reminds her how, when she visited Madrid at the age of 18 and saw *Guernica* on display, it was the first time she responded emotionally to a work of art. ‘I love what it makes me think of. It’s like *keep going, and keep the f*cking light on*’.   

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/9FxN9JgRi6M" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>


## Shaping identities 

How many people have become acquainted with Picasso’s work for the first time on discovering the tattoo on the actress’s arm? An internet search for ‘Kristen Stewart tattoo meaning’ returns hundreds of hits. We also find hundreds of replicas, copies and imitations on many other people’s skin. Patches of painted skin which we can’t stop looking at and which arouse curiosity, doubts or admiration.

Tattoo art has become one of the contemporary technologies that help build subjectivity and personal identity, and it’s also a form of relating personally to others. When someone has a Picasso tattooed onto their skin, it seems that they appropriate it – the artist merges with the tattooed person’s identity and enriches it with new meanings. It thus acts as a means of conveying desires, aspirations or simply admiration for a figure who has become a collective and universal icon.

medium_tattoo.jpeg

small_tattoo.jpeg

thumbnail_tattoo.jpeg

tattoo.jpeg

Tattoos inspired by Pablo Picasso

Picasso under your skin

Brassaï's photographs of the 1930s have contributed to shaping the image we have of the French capital by evoking its artistic, social and intellectual scene. He X-rayed this great city, both by day and by night, from the underworld to the splendour of its social and artistic milieu. The Paris he captures shows the modern, cosmopolitan metropolis par excellence in a Europe marked by the major changes brought about by the industrial history of the nineteenth century. A city experienced and loved by him, and also by his colleague and friend Pablo Picasso.

![Brassai_017@0.5x.jpg](https://www.museopicassomalaga.org/cms/uploads/Brassai_017_0_5x_c005cf5218.jpg)  
The Eiffel Tower seen through the gate of the Trocadero, 1930-1932. Photography by Brassaï © Estate Brassaï Succession-Philippe Ribeyrolles

In December 1932 art critic Tériade invited Brassaï to photograph Picasso, his studio and his sculptures to illustrate the first issue of the legendary Surrealist publication Minotaure, a collaboration that led to a long and sincere friendship fuelled by mutual admiration. The photographer was fascinated by artist’s personality, and Picasso admired Brassaï’s unprejudiced gaze. They were two foreign friends in a big city: one went on to become one of the great photographers of the twentieth century, and the other the great artist who changed the history of art. They shared an extraordinary gift for observation and a keen curiosity. Both collected strange objects discarded and found by chance and had a notable interest in primitive art, the so-called art brut, bones, poetry and graffiti. They also had in common their refusal to focus on a single discipline in their desire to explore other creative fields.

This privileged relationship and the obvious rapport between the two men made the photographer an exceptional witness to Picasso’s intimate world: his places of creation, his works, his family environment and his friends. Brassaï was highly sensitive to detail; he knew how to bring order to disorder and lend his photographs a quasi-architectural structure, affording a new dimension to the works created by Picasso and to the objects and materials with which he surrounded himself.

![Brassai_175@0.5x.jpg](https://www.museopicassomalaga.org/cms/uploads/Brassai_175_0_5x_aed517459f.jpg)  
Plaster sculptures in Pablo Picasso’s studio in Boisgeloup, December 1932. Photography by Brassaï © Estate Brassaï Succession-Philippe Ribeyrolles © Sucesión Pablo Picasso, VEGAP, Madrid, 2022

One of the most important written works for learning about Picasso is precisely a book by Brassaï: *Conversations with Picasso* (1964), a fascinating text that highlights the immediacy and attention to detail of a man who writes like a photograph. This chronicle, which Brassaï accompanies with more than fifty snapshots, begins in September 1943 – twelve years after he first met the painter – and ends in September 1962, providing a two-decade account of Picasso and a creative environment of which the Málaga-born painter was the epicentre. In addition, it tells of important episodes in the history of the art of the period and interesting events that took place during those years.

![Brassai_212@0.5x.jpg](https://www.museopicassomalaga.org/cms/uploads/Brassai_212_0_5x_019308be94.jpg)  
Pablo Picasso by the large stove in the studio on the rue des Grands-Augustins, September 1939. Photography by Brassaï © Estate Brassaï Succession-Philippe Ribeyrolles © Sucesión Pablo Picasso, VEGAP, Madrid, 2022

large_Brassaï et Picasso à Mougins, Notre-Dame-de-Vie, 1966.jpg

medium_Brassaï et Picasso à Mougins, Notre-Dame-de-Vie, 1966.jpg

small_Brassaï et Picasso à Mougins, Notre-Dame-de-Vie, 1966.jpg

thumbnail_Brassaï et Picasso à Mougins, Notre-Dame-de-Vie, 1966.jpg

xlarge_Brassaï et Picasso à Mougins, Notre-Dame-de-Vie, 1966.jpg

xxlarge_Brassaï et Picasso à Mougins, Notre-Dame-de-Vie, 1966.jpg

zoom_Brassaï et Picasso à Mougins, Notre-Dame-de-Vie, 1966.jpg

Brassaï et Picasso à Mougins, Notre-Dame-de-Vie, 1966.jpg

The friendship between two foreigners in Paris

Picasso and Brassaï

The artist presents a design or prototype which, through collaboration with a craftsperson, manufacturer or other artist, materialises into one or several replicas of an object generally through an industrial manufacturing process.

![02_André Villers.jpeg](https://www.museopicassomalaga.org/cms/uploads/02_Andre_Villers_0f01d2d04b.jpeg)  
*In Madoura*, October 1953. Photograph by André Villers. Private collection. 

François Hugo, George and Suzanne Ramié, Carl Nesjar, Egidio Costantini and Jacqueline de la Baume-Dürrbach collaborated with Pablo Picasso fairly frequently to create jewellery, ceramics, public monuments, glass objects and textiles. 

The fact he was born into a culture – that of the Mediterranean – so historically inclined to indulgence in the pleasures of manual activity undoubtedly partly accounts for the interest Pablo Picasso always showed in the popular arts. In addition, these creations provided a highly fertile ground for artistic experimentation: they allowed him to work with materials other than those commonly used in the visual arts,  for instance clay or silver; to become acquainted with practices and objects deeply rooted in the prehistoric origins of his native land, such as the pendants made from engraved pebbles and bones; and to produce his creations in working spaces other than his painter’s studios, for example the Madoura pottery workshop in Vallauris.

To what extent were these collaborative pieces designed to be used? There are photographs proving that some of them did have a function, or at least that they were used in the artist’s most private environment. But apart from these rare testimonies, the fact is that over the years critics, literature and museum institutions themselves have given these objects (and the sketches that preceded them) the same consideration of artworks that a drawing, a sculpture or even a painting by the artist might have, and they have joined the collections of important museums all over the world and fetched very high prices at reputed auction houses.

![03_Robert Doisneau.jpeg](https://www.museopicassomalaga.org/cms/uploads/03_Robert_Doisneau_4b311ca6fd.jpeg)  
Françoise Gilot wearing the *Satyr* pendant with Pablo Picasso in the background at La Galloise, Vallauris, September 1952. Photograph by Robert Doisneau

The works featured in Dialogues with Picasso. Collection 2020−2023 at the Museo Picasso Málaga include a large number of pieces of this kind. One such object is a tapestry based on the legendary picture Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907), which was executed in 1958 in Jacqueline de la Baume-Dürrbach’s tapestry workshop. Authorised by the artist, the weaver took a number of artistic liberties resulting in a work that is iconographically recognisable but formally and artistically diverse. Picasso liked the tapestry so much that he decided to hang it in his studio at ‘La Californie’. 

![04_Edward Quinn.jpeg](https://www.museopicassomalaga.org/cms/uploads/04_Edward_Quinn_0e24597bab.jpeg)  
Tapestry of *Les Demoiselles d’Avignon* hanging on the wall of Picasso’s studio at ‘La Californie’. Photograph by Edward Quinn.

large_01_David Douglas Duncan.jpeg

medium_01_David Douglas Duncan.jpeg

small_01_David Douglas Duncan.jpeg

thumbnail_01_David Douglas Duncan.jpeg

01_David Douglas Duncan.jpeg

Picasso and the applied arts

From sketch to object

## Interviews and notes

Richardson’s fascination with Picasso dates back to his teenage years, when he tried to persuade his mother to lend him £50 to buy a print by the artist. Later on, from the 1950s onwards, Richardson coincided with Picasso when they were both living in the south of France and remained close to him for years. Intending to write a biography, Richardson kept a diary of his meetings with Picasso and after the artist’s death his widow Jacqueline Roque agreed to collaborate with the author by allowing him access to the archives and documents she held.
Richardson performed a mammoth task; he compiled and organised abundant documented details about the artist’s life with great narrative skill while also providing well-founded interpretations that give an insight into moments and situations. The result is the four volumes that make up *A Life of Picasso: The Prodigy, 1881−1906* (vol. 1), 1991; *The Cubist Rebel, 1907−1916* (vol. 2), 1996; *The Triumphant Years, 1917−1932* (vol. 3), 2007; and *The Minotaur Years, 1933−1943* (vol. 4), 2021. The first two volumes have been translated into Spanish and all of them are accompanied by numerous illustrations of works, people and places.

## The Minotaur Years

![Obra_Coleccion_MPM2.147R.jpg](https://www.museopicassomalaga.org/cms/uploads/MPM_2_147_R_low_5ca35b65fa.jpg)
Pablo Picasso, Minotaur Caressing the Hand of a Sleeping Woman with its Muzzle, Boisgeloup, 18 June 1933. Drypoint on copperplate, printed on paper, 29.9 × 36.5 cm. Date don plate in reverse lower left: Boisgeloup. 18 juin XXXIII. Museo Picasso Málaga. Gift of Bernard Ruiz-Picasso. © FABA Photo: Hugard & Vanoverschelde Photography © Sucesión Pablo Picasso, VEGAP, Madrid, 2022 

Volume 4 examines the decade from 1933 to 1943, a period full of tensions, crises and aesthetic discoveries for the artist. The title chosen by Richardson refers to the prints depicting the human and animal figure which Picasso borrowed from Greek mythology for his iconographic repertoire and translated visually into an embodiment of desire, an expression of aggression or guilt, joyfully humanised or with the violence of a menacing animal. It is undoubtedly a symbolic figure of an era fraught with tensions and ups and downs in Picasso’s life.

## Social commitment

Richardson also stresses the importance of Picasso’s social and political commitment during this decade. Most biographers usually date this new awareness to the bombing of Guernica in 1937, but Richardson proposes an alternative interpretation of the events, establishing his drawing *The Death of Marat* of 1934 – a free allusion to the exceptional painting by the French painter Jacques-Louis David – as a unique precedent for the repertoire surrounding Guernica.

![UniversoPicasso_Richardson_SuenoMentiraFranco.jpeg](https://www.museopicassomalaga.org/cms/uploads/Universo_Picasso_Richardson_Sueno_Mentira_Franco_0559ff3fac.jpeg)
Pablo Picasso, Dream and Lie of Franco (plate I), Paris, 8 January 1937. Illustrated book (published as a folder): etching and sugar-lift aquatint on copperplate, printed on paper, 31.5 × 42 cm. Dated on the plate, upper centre, reversed: 8 janvier 1937. Museo Picasso Málaga. Acquisition 2010. © Museo Picasso Málaga. Photo: Marc Domage © Sucesión Pablo Picasso, VEGAP, Madrid, 2022

This fourth and last volume ends here, in 1943. There will be no fifth volume as John Richardson died on 12 March 2019 at the age of 95. His research assistants and editor, who completed the volume, made it possible to bring out the book. Never again will an author be able to combine personal familiarity with the artist with such a wealth of historical fact, perspicacity, hearsay, detail and thoroughness. Although incomplete, it is a unique biography of unquestionable value. 

large_UniversoPicasso_Richardson_Portada.jpg

medium_UniversoPicasso_Richardson_Portada.jpg

small_UniversoPicasso_Richardson_Portada.jpg

thumbnail_UniversoPicasso_Richardson_Portada.jpg

xlarge_UniversoPicasso_Richardson_Portada.jpg

xxlarge_UniversoPicasso_Richardson_Portada.jpg

zoom_UniversoPicasso_Richardson_Portada.jpg

UniversoPicasso_Richardson_Portada.jpg

Publication of the fourth volume written by John Richardson

The most detailed biography of Picasso

The times when Picasso’s first wife, Russian ballerina Olga Khokhlova, dressed in Coco Chanel have changed, and over the years a fair number of prestigious maisons have borrowed shapes and gestures from Picasso’s rich repertoire for their collections. Take, for example, French couturier Yves Saint Laurent in his 1979 and 1989 collections. Dominican fashion designer Óscar de la Renta likewise paid tribute to Picasso’s Cubist period in 2012, and other present-day creators such as American Tory Burch, inspired by the painter’s partner Françoise Gilot, and Brazilian footwear designer Charlotte Olympia are among those who have recently included references to Picasso’s universe in their clothing or accessories.

## Cubist polo dresses 

In 2016 Dutch fashion design duo Viktor & Rolf recalled Picasso’s papiers collés and the angular faces of his female portraits. In their collection – significantly entitled The Performance of Sculptures – they started with a simple white tennis dress and adapted it with progressively more complex alterations. The volumes jutted outwards, spiralled, swirled and were projected into space to the point of completely concealing the models, who were engulfed by towering Cubist polo dresses.  

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/CMem1lURFmQ" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

In some of their designs they appropriated the distorted faces of Dora Maar; in others they invited viewers to conjure up visions of Françoise Gillot. The result became a markedly sculptural exercise which, besides using visual references, stemmed from a conceptual approach that explored the meaning of space and the boundaries between the second and third dimensions. 

## The model as a canvas

Perhaps the Picasso-inspired collection that has attracted the most media attention in recent years is that of Italian fashion house Moschino. In 2020 the Italian firm’s creative director Jeremy Scott presented harlequins, guitars and mandolins – colours and designs whose inspiration was the result of a formal exploration of what is known as Synthetic Cubism. It was as though the women depicted in the painter’s canvases were parading down the catwalk, articulating a sort of spatial jigsaw puzzle. Whereas Cubist paintings represent the three-dimensional fragmentation of space into two dimensions, in Scott’s show space was flattened into a pictorial two-dimensional appearance. Scott treated the models as canvases and the dresses as sculptures.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/8NuXDxaIR5s" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

There was much talk in the specialised press about this collection and Scott’s intentions in drawing inspiration from Picasso’s work. In any case, going beyond the literal reference to inspiration, the designs displayed lots of personality: from an artistic point of view, they played with space and the dimension of the body and did so in their own context, that of the catwalk and fashion.



large_UniversoPicasso_Moda_ViktorRolf.jpeg

medium_UniversoPicasso_Moda_ViktorRolf.jpeg

small_UniversoPicasso_Moda_ViktorRolf.jpeg

thumbnail_UniversoPicasso_Moda_ViktorRolf.jpeg

xlarge_UniversoPicasso_Moda_ViktorRolf.jpeg

UniversoPicasso_Moda_ViktorRolf.jpeg

Picasso and contemporary fashion

Only suitable for the catwalk

Picasso decorated plates with mythological characters, created doves that he later adorned, and designed still lifes on pots and bullfighting scenes on serving dishes, bringing a hitherto unseen degree of experimentation to this popular art form.

![Universo Picasso_MPM2.144#_PICASSO_Busto de fauno.jpg](https://www.museopicassomalaga.org/cms/uploads/Universo_Picasso_MPM_2_144_PICASSO_Busto_de_fauno_b4335da61c.jpg)
Bust of a Faun. Cannes, 2 April 1957. Plat espagnol of red earthenware, thrown and dipped in white slip, sgraffito, diam: 44.5 cm. Museo Picasso Málaga. Gift of Bernard Ruiz-Picasso. © Museo Picasso Málaga © Photo: Marc Domage 


## Vallauris

Picasso began producing pottery continuously at the Madoura pottery studio in Vallauris, an ancient pottery centre in southeast France. The artist was attracted by the place itself, with its old houses and ancient wood-fired kilns, and also by the opportunities and facilities for experimentation provided by Madoura’s owners, Suzanne and Georges Ramié, who became hosts to this primitive art for Picasso, ever curious and keen to discover new art forms. 

![Universo Picasso_H7.1(5)-0403-D.jpg](https://www.museopicassomalaga.org/cms/uploads/Universo_Picasso_H7_1_5_0403_D_0818ba511e.jpg)
Roberto Otero (1931−2004). *View of the pottery studio of Madoura*. Vallauris, [1964-1972] Chromogenic image. Museo Picasso Málaga. Photo: Roberto Otero © Roberto Otero, Museo Picasso Málaga, Málaga, 2022 
 
## Tradition and innovation

Picasso learned from Suzanne Raimé the traditional Mediterranean pottery and glazing techniques as well as techniques for decorating pieces with slips, oxides and sgraffito and firing them in a Roman-style wood-burning kiln. Picasso often took existing objects, generally standard workshop products, and, making use of their volumes, painted them with eyes, heads, animal shapes, still lifes, bullrings... Picasso gave a new meaning to objects that were still recognisable. Sometimes he even collected materials from the debris dumps and transformed them, treating them like archaeological remains painted with Greek-inspired motifs in a unique combination of classical tradition, popular objects and modernity. 


<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/yo_0EOMwcno" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

One of the most striking pieces in the Museo Picasso Málaga’s collection is Insect. This type of pot-bellied vessel with three handles on each side and a stopper is known in Provence by the name of gus, and is used to hold vinegar or water. A rope was threaded through the handles to hang it on the wall. Picasso chose a simple decorative technique and painted directly onto the white earthenware with blue slip and incised a few motifs in the blue to reveal the underlying white, transforming the traditional vessel into an six-legged creature. 

![Universo Picasso_MPM2.143__PICASSO_Insecto.jpg](https://www.museopicassomalaga.org/cms/uploads/Universo_Picasso_MPM_2_143_PICASSO_Insecto_dd3eb6fe93.jpg)
*Insect*. Vallauris, 1951. White earthenware, thrown (attached elements), incised, painted with slips and oxides, glazed, 42 × 35 × 26 cm. Museo Picasso Málaga. Gift of Bernard Ruiz-Picasso. © Museo Picasso Málaga. Photo: Marc Domage

Once again, an everyday object is transformed into something new, familiar yet enigmatic. Picasso did not use technique to express pre-existing ideas. Far from it: fascinated by the technique itself, he continually sought ways of pushing its boundaries, achieving effects that seasoned professionals would have deemed impossible. By reinventing the technical languages of painting, sculpture, printmaking and ceramics, he expanded the range of what could be said in each of these languages. 

Header image: Roberto Otero (1931−2004) *Picasso decorating a pot.* Vallauris, 11 August 1966. Gelatin silver print. Museo Picasso Málaga. Fondo Roberto Otero © Museo Picasso Málaga. Photo: Roberto Otero © Roberto Otero, Museo Picasso Málaga, Málaga, 2022 






Ancestral and popular

large_Universo Picasso portada_0446_1056x680.jpg

medium_Universo Picasso portada_0446_1056x680.jpg

small_Universo Picasso portada_0446_1056x680.jpg

thumbnail_Universo Picasso portada_0446_1056x680.jpg

Universo Picasso portada_0446_1056x680.jpg

Picasso and ceramics

Made of earth

<p>Picasso decorated plates with mythological characters, created doves that he later adorned, and designed still lifes on pots and bullfighting scenes on serving dishes, bringing a hitherto unseen degree of experimentation to this popular art form.</p>
<p><img class="image" src="https://www.museopicassomalaga.org/cms/uploads/Universo_Picasso_MPM_2_144_PICASSO_Busto_de_fauno_b4335da61c.jpg" alt="" />
Bust of a Faun. Cannes, 2 April 1957. Plat espagnol of red earthenware, thrown and dipped in white slip, sgraffito, diam: 44.5 cm. Museo Picasso Málaga. Gift of Bernard Ruiz-Picasso. © Museo Picasso Málaga © Photo: Marc Domage</p>
<h2>Vallauris</h2>
<p>Picasso began producing pottery continuously at the Madoura pottery studio in Vallauris, an ancient pottery centre in southeast France. The artist was attracted by the place itself, with its old houses and ancient wood-fired kilns, and also by the opportunities and facilities for experimentation provided by Madoura’s owners, Suzanne and Georges Ramié, who became hosts to this primitive art for Picasso, ever curious and keen to discover new art forms.</p>
<p><img class="image" src="https://www.museopicassomalaga.org/cms/uploads/Universo_Picasso_H7_1_5_0403_D_0818ba511e.jpg" alt="" />
Roberto Otero (1931−2004). <em>View of the pottery studio of Madoura</em>. Vallauris, [1964-1972] Chromogenic image. Museo Picasso Málaga. Photo: Roberto Otero © Roberto Otero, Museo Picasso Málaga, Málaga, 2022</p>
<h2>Tradition and innovation</h2>
<p>Picasso learned from Suzanne Raimé the traditional Mediterranean pottery and glazing techniques as well as techniques for decorating pieces with slips, oxides and sgraffito and firing them in a Roman-style wood-burning kiln. Picasso often took existing objects, generally standard workshop products, and, making use of their volumes, painted them with eyes, heads, animal shapes, still lifes, bullrings… Picasso gave a new meaning to objects that were still recognisable. Sometimes he even collected materials from the debris dumps and transformed them, treating them like archaeological remains painted with Greek-inspired motifs in a unique combination of classical tradition, popular objects and modernity.</p>
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/yo_0EOMwcno" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<p>One of the most striking pieces in the Museo Picasso Málaga’s collection is Insect. This type of pot-bellied vessel with three handles on each side and a stopper is known in Provence by the name of gus, and is used to hold vinegar or water. A rope was threaded through the handles to hang it on the wall. Picasso chose a simple decorative technique and painted directly onto the white earthenware with blue slip and incised a few motifs in the blue to reveal the underlying white, transforming the traditional vessel into an six-legged creature.</p>
<p><img class="image" src="https://www.museopicassomalaga.org/cms/uploads/Universo_Picasso_MPM_2_143_PICASSO_Insecto_dd3eb6fe93.jpg" alt="" />
<em>Insect</em>. Vallauris, 1951. White earthenware, thrown (attached elements), incised, painted with slips and oxides, glazed, 42 × 35 × 26 cm. Museo Picasso Málaga. Gift of Bernard Ruiz-Picasso. © Museo Picasso Málaga. Photo: Marc Domage</p>
<p>Once again, an everyday object is transformed into something new, familiar yet enigmatic. Picasso did not use technique to express pre-existing ideas. Far from it: fascinated by the technique itself, he continually sought ways of pushing its boundaries, achieving effects that seasoned professionals would have deemed impossible. By reinventing the technical languages of painting, sculpture, printmaking and ceramics, he expanded the range of what could be said in each of these languages.</p>
<p>Header image: Roberto Otero (1931−2004) <em>Picasso decorating a pot.</em> Vallauris, 11 August 1966. Gelatin silver print. Museo Picasso Málaga. Fondo Roberto Otero © Museo Picasso Málaga. Photo: Roberto Otero © Roberto Otero, Museo Picasso Málaga, Málaga, 2022</p>


<h2>Interviews and notes</h2>
<p>Richardson’s fascination with Picasso dates back to his teenage years, when he tried to persuade his mother to lend him £50 to buy a print by the artist. Later on, from the 1950s onwards, Richardson coincided with Picasso when they were both living in the south of France and remained close to him for years. Intending to write a biography, Richardson kept a diary of his meetings with Picasso and after the artist’s death his widow Jacqueline Roque agreed to collaborate with the author by allowing him access to the archives and documents she held.
Richardson performed a mammoth task; he compiled and organised abundant documented details about the artist’s life with great narrative skill while also providing well-founded interpretations that give an insight into moments and situations. The result is the four volumes that make up <em>A Life of Picasso: The Prodigy, 1881−1906</em> (vol. 1), 1991; <em>The Cubist Rebel, 1907−1916</em> (vol. 2), 1996; <em>The Triumphant Years, 1917−1932</em> (vol. 3), 2007; and <em>The Minotaur Years, 1933−1943</em> (vol. 4), 2021. The first two volumes have been translated into Spanish and all of them are accompanied by numerous illustrations of works, people and places.</p>
<h2>The Minotaur Years</h2>
<p><img class="image" src="https://www.museopicassomalaga.org/cms/uploads/MPM_2_147_R_low_5ca35b65fa.jpg" alt="" />
Pablo Picasso, Minotaur Caressing the Hand of a Sleeping Woman with its Muzzle, Boisgeloup, 18 June 1933. Drypoint on copperplate, printed on paper, 29.9 × 36.5 cm. Date don plate in reverse lower left: Boisgeloup. 18 juin XXXIII. Museo Picasso Málaga. Gift of Bernard Ruiz-Picasso. © FABA Photo: Hugard &amp; Vanoverschelde Photography © Sucesión Pablo Picasso, VEGAP, Madrid, 2022</p>
<p>Volume 4 examines the decade from 1933 to 1943, a period full of tensions, crises and aesthetic discoveries for the artist. The title chosen by Richardson refers to the prints depicting the human and animal figure which Picasso borrowed from Greek mythology for his iconographic repertoire and translated visually into an embodiment of desire, an expression of aggression or guilt, joyfully humanised or with the violence of a menacing animal. It is undoubtedly a symbolic figure of an era fraught with tensions and ups and downs in Picasso’s life.</p>
<h2>Social commitment</h2>
<p>Richardson also stresses the importance of Picasso’s social and political commitment during this decade. Most biographers usually date this new awareness to the bombing of Guernica in 1937, but Richardson proposes an alternative interpretation of the events, establishing his drawing <em>The Death of Marat</em> of 1934 – a free allusion to the exceptional painting by the French painter Jacques-Louis David – as a unique precedent for the repertoire surrounding Guernica.</p>
<p><img class="image" src="https://www.museopicassomalaga.org/cms/uploads/Universo_Picasso_Richardson_Sueno_Mentira_Franco_0559ff3fac.jpeg" alt="" />
Pablo Picasso, Dream and Lie of Franco (plate I), Paris, 8 January 1937. Illustrated book (published as a folder): etching and sugar-lift aquatint on copperplate, printed on paper, 31.5 × 42 cm. Dated on the plate, upper centre, reversed: 8 janvier 1937. Museo Picasso Málaga. Acquisition 2010. © Museo Picasso Málaga. Photo: Marc Domage © Sucesión Pablo Picasso, VEGAP, Madrid, 2022</p>
<p>This fourth and last volume ends here, in 1943. There will be no fifth volume as John Richardson died on 12 March 2019 at the age of 95. His research assistants and editor, who completed the volume, made it possible to bring out the book. Never again will an author be able to combine personal familiarity with the artist with such a wealth of historical fact, perspicacity, hearsay, detail and thoroughness. Although incomplete, it is a unique biography of unquestionable value.</p>


<p>The times when Picasso’s first wife, Russian ballerina Olga Khokhlova, dressed in Coco Chanel have changed, and over the years a fair number of prestigious maisons have borrowed shapes and gestures from Picasso’s rich repertoire for their collections. Take, for example, French couturier Yves Saint Laurent in his 1979 and 1989 collections. Dominican fashion designer Óscar de la Renta likewise paid tribute to Picasso’s Cubist period in 2012, and other present-day creators such as American Tory Burch, inspired by the painter’s partner Françoise Gilot, and Brazilian footwear designer Charlotte Olympia are among those who have recently included references to Picasso’s universe in their clothing or accessories.</p>
<h2>Cubist polo dresses</h2>
<p>In 2016 Dutch fashion design duo Viktor &amp; Rolf recalled Picasso’s papiers collés and the angular faces of his female portraits. In their collection – significantly entitled The Performance of Sculptures – they started with a simple white tennis dress and adapted it with progressively more complex alterations. The volumes jutted outwards, spiralled, swirled and were projected into space to the point of completely concealing the models, who were engulfed by towering Cubist polo dresses.</p>
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/CMem1lURFmQ" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<p>In some of their designs they appropriated the distorted faces of Dora Maar; in others they invited viewers to conjure up visions of Françoise Gillot. The result became a markedly sculptural exercise which, besides using visual references, stemmed from a conceptual approach that explored the meaning of space and the boundaries between the second and third dimensions.</p>
<h2>The model as a canvas</h2>
<p>Perhaps the Picasso-inspired collection that has attracted the most media attention in recent years is that of Italian fashion house Moschino. In 2020 the Italian firm’s creative director Jeremy Scott presented harlequins, guitars and mandolins – colours and designs whose inspiration was the result of a formal exploration of what is known as Synthetic Cubism. It was as though the women depicted in the painter’s canvases were parading down the catwalk, articulating a sort of spatial jigsaw puzzle. Whereas Cubist paintings represent the three-dimensional fragmentation of space into two dimensions, in Scott’s show space was flattened into a pictorial two-dimensional appearance. Scott treated the models as canvases and the dresses as sculptures.</p>
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/8NuXDxaIR5s" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<p>There was much talk in the specialised press about this collection and Scott’s intentions in drawing inspiration from Picasso’s work. In any case, going beyond the literal reference to inspiration, the designs displayed lots of personality: from an artistic point of view, they played with space and the dimension of the body and did so in their own context, that of the catwalk and fashion.</p>


Picasso's Universe