## 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*’. 

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## 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.

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Tattoos inspired by Pablo Picasso

Picasso under your skin

And yet, despite being one of the most highly acclaimed artists of the twentieth century – with all the consequences and demands of fame – and for all his global reach, Picasso led a predominantly local life. And it is precisely this ‘localness’ that determined many of the essential aspects that make his works recognisable: portraits of relatives and friends, scenes of festivities, the reinterpretation of (Greco-Roman) origins, and vernacular artistic practices, among others.  

Málaga, La Coruña, Barcelona, Paris, Boisgeloup, Antibes, Vallauris, Cannes, Vauvernages and Mougins… We find that after spending time in major art hubs Picasso constantly sought refuge in places far away from the bustle of city life – villages surrounded by nature where he played host to other artists, intellectuals and gallery owners, bringing them together around a table and creating a welcoming and relaxed, homely atmosphere without protocol or dress codes.  

These scenes are known through the photographs taken by Brassaï, David Douglas Duncan, Edward Quinn, Robert Doisneau, Lucien Clergue and Willy Rizzo, among many other photographers, throughout Picasso’s lifetime. Besides providing a biographical insight into the artist, these photo reports have served to highlight the strong link between Picasso’s experience in a – local – setting with more or less stable characteristics and an oeuvre whose overwhelming presence lives on in our own day.  

Four features we might define as local are notable for their constant presence in the photographs of Picasso: nature, food, home and festivities.

## Nature 

‘Picasso may love or hate men, but he adores all animals […]. At the Bateau-Lavoir he had three Siamese cats, a dog, a female monkey, and a tortoise; a tame white mouse lived in a table drawer […] In Vallauris, he had a she-goat; in Cannes, a monkey. As for dogs, not for one day has he been without their company. […] If it had been up to him, he would always have surrounded himself with a regular Noah’s ark’. [1]

## Food  

‘Cathy, Paloma and Claude, nieces and nephews and friends descended upon Vauvenargues for vacations […]. There still were cornucopian lunches, with newly baked bread, local fruit juices, fresh tomatoes and wood-smoked saucisson which overflowed the homemade dinner service – before the daily corrida began’. [2] 

## Home  

‘Picasso y Jacqueline lived a frugal, almost monastic existence together. She rarely left the house alone, then only to market or shop for their home, or to search for emergency supplies when he was barricaded in his studio surrounded by dripping canvases. The villa was bare of modern comforts possessing only a few ill-sorted pieces of furniture, no curtains or drapes, unmatched silver and china […] yet it was a noble place’. [3]

![03.jpg](https://www.museopicassomalaga.org/cms/uploads/03_03c58d9e6f.jpg)
_Pablo Picasso playing the trumpet in Vallauris during the parade which proceeded the bullfight on his honor_, 1954. Photo by Edward Quinn, © edwardquinn.com © Succession Pablo Picasso, VEGAP, Madrid, 2023 

## Festivities  

Many of the people who visited Picasso throughout his lifetime describe his cheerful, fun-loving nature. Besides attending with interest and presiding at bullfights and other public and official celebrations, ‘a visit to Picasso is always a new adventure’ [4]: ‘The moment when disguises are calling for most urgently is on the arrival of visitors, especially those from abroad. The less known or the more intimidating his guest may be, the more likely it is that he will find himself confronted by the master not as he expected to find him but as a burlesque little figure wearing, perhaps, a yachting cap with horn-rimmed spectacles, a red nose and black side-whiskers and brandishing a sabre. When this grotesque dance has effectively removed the first embarrassment of meeting, Picasso emerges from behind his mask, his eyes shining with laughter and his expression still enigmatic’. [5]


[1] Brassaï. *Conversations with Picasso*. Chicago and London, The University of Chicago Press, 1999, p. 266  
[2] David Douglas Duncan. *Goodbye Picasso*, New York, Grosset & Dunlap, 1974, p. 255   
[3] David Douglas Duncan. op. cit. p. 221  
[4] Roland Penrose. *Picasso*. His life and work. Nueva York: Schocken Books, 1962, p. 367  
[5] Roland Penrose. Op. cit. p. 361.

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Nature, Food, Home and Festivities

Picasso, a ‘Frugal Existence’

## The maquette

Architect Jacques Brownson of C. F. Murphy Associates designed the Richard J. Daley Center in 1965. This new, international-style building was planned with the idea of housing a sculpture in the plaza in front of the skyscraper.  

But it was another architect, William Hartmann, who contacted Picasso in 1963 to present the project to him and give him this monumental commission. The idea aroused the interest of the artist, who, according to photographer Roberto Otero – a witness to this visit – exclaimed: ‘Now that I think it over it occurs to me that the only two cities which have made public monuments out of my sculptures are Marseilles and Chicago. Do you think it has something to do with gangsters?’ 

During the following months Hartmann crossed the Atlantic several times to meet the artist and progress with the planning of the monument – size of the maquette, tests for its location according to the sunlight, etc. During one of these visits, the architect presented him with a series of technical modifications made by his team of engineers to enable the structure to reach a height of more than 15 metres and withstand the force of the wind. 

‘What madness! Do you realize! Have you seen these plans? As I understand it, some twenty architects have been working on this for more than a year. If I thought of all that while I was working I don't know if I'd be able to do it. Many times I do think of it, and it scares me’, exclaimed Picasso in a conversation with Roberto Otero in Hartmann’s presence. 

Picasso made two steel maquettes, one for himself and one for the architect, now in the [Art Institute of Chicago](https://www.artic.edu/artworks/25809/maquette-for-richard-j-daley-center-sculpture). After the monument was unveiled, Hartmann returned to Mougins with a cheque for $100,000 for Picasso, but the artist refused it, expressing his wish that the work be a gift to the people of Chicago. 

![Universo Picasso_Imagen  02.jpg](https://www.museopicassomalaga.org/cms/uploads/Universo_Picasso_Imagen_02_c1aba71e99.jpg)
*Picasso and Hartmann next to the model of* Head of a Woman. Notre-Dame-de-Vie (Mougins), August 1966. Fondo Roberto Otero. Museo Picasso Málaga © Fondo Roberto Otero. Museo Picasso Málaga, 2023 © Succession Pablo Picasso, VEGAP, Malaga, 2023 

## The monument

Taking as a basis the maquette Picasso gave Hartmann, the American Bridge Company crafted the monumental work in the town of Gary (Indiana) using Cor-Ten steel. The huge pieces weighing 162 tons were transported to Chicago to be assembled there. The process of joining them was concealed from the public by awnings and scaffolding. 

The *Chicago Picasso* was officially unveiled on August 15, 1967. Between the ceremonial events the Chicago Symphony Orchestra performed pieces by Leornard Bernstein and George Gershwin, and poet Gwendolyn Brooks publicly recited the [poem *Chicago's Picasso*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZ0Y8Si19q0). 

## The hat  

When the curtain was pulled back to reveal the sculpture on August 15, the crowds voiced opinions of all kinds. Although it was unclear to the public whether it represented Picasso's dog, an Egyptian god, a cow or a bird, the fact is that over time the *Chicago Picasso* marked a turning point in public sculpture in the United States in general and in Chicago in particular – characterised until then by the use of materials such as stone or marble and commemorative themes. 

The work soon became one of the city's landmarks. The creative responses were manifold, and it even inspired fashion garments such as the ‘Picasso Hat’ designed by Elisabeth Drees, who wrote a letter to Picasso enclosing several newspaper clippings and introducing him to her hat, which was ‘inspired by a walk around the sculpture, and the big picture in the *Chicago Daily News’*. 

![Universo Picasso_Imagen 03.jpg](https://www.museopicassomalaga.org/cms/uploads/Universo_Picasso_Imagen_03_60b45e385a.jpg)
*Letter from Elizabeth Drees to Pablo Picasso*, 1967. Impresión offset sobre papel. Musée national Picasso-Paris © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée national Picasso-Paris)/Mathieu Rabeau  © Succession Pablo Picasso, VEGAP, Malaga, 2023  


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The sculpture Picasso gave Chicago 

A maquette, a monument and a hat

Not only images but also words have played a key role in the year of the [*Picasso Celebration 1973–2023*](https://celebracionpicasso.es/), an international programme featuring more than fifty exhibitions and events held in cultural institutions of Europe and North America. And it is precisely the context of these commemorations which has stepped up related editorial production and spurred the publishing, editing and revising of many books on Pablo Picasso written from very different approaches, prominent among which are the following:

## THE BIOGRAPHICAL APPROACH 

Descriptions, recreations and accounts of episodes in Picasso’s life are presented in several books published in 2022 and 2023 with three particular features: journalistic language, thorough documentation and documented fiction. These three cases furthermore highlight a trend that has taken on a key role in cultural and social studies over the past years: the adoption of a gynocentric perspective. 

Two books have been published in French on the relationship between Picasso and Marie-Thérèse: *Sa vie pour Picasso: Marie-Thérèse Walter* (Stock, 2022) and *Marie-Thérèse Walter & Pablo Picasso: Biographie d'une relation* (Nouvelles éditions Scala, 2022). The first, by French journalist and writer Brigitte Benkemoun, has 150 pages, and the second, by art curator Laurence Madeleine, more than 600. Both books, written respectively in journalistic and art-historical language, are less centred on Pablo Picasso and instead pay more attention to Marie-Thérèse. 

![Las mujeres detrás de Picasso_portada.JPG](https://www.museopicassomalaga.org/cms/uploads/Las_mujeres_detras_de_Picasso_portada_a3bc67f1ff.JPG)

Two publications belong to the docufiction genre (‘non-fiction novel’ or ‘fiction based on real events’, as their authors describe them). They are Las traiciones de Picasso (Turner, 2022) by José María Beneyto, and *Las mujeres detrás de Picasso* (Lunwerg, 2023) by art historian, communicator and activist Eugenia Tenenbaum. These publications fall halfway between the truthfulness of documentary and the imagination of literary creativity, and are undoubtedly a genre highly representative of the present day. 

## THE POLITICAL APPROACH 

There are also many publications that link the artist to political contexts not only throughout his lifetime but also after his death in 1973. It should be remembered that Pablo Picasso lived to be 91 – nine decades that witnessed significant historical events, such as two world wars and the Spanish Civil War. 

![2 (1).jpg](https://www.museopicassomalaga.org/cms/uploads/2_1_ff50f0f5af.jpg)

In *Picasso con los exiliados* (Muñeca Infinita, 2023), which spans just over 150 pages, activist and anarchist writer Mercedes Guillén, the co-founder of Mujeres Libres, tells of her friendship with the artist and how he helped Republican exiles in Paris. This human and everyday account provides very valuable firsthand information about the life of Spanish exiles in France. 

The Spanish translation of Anne Cohen-Solal’s book, *Un extranjero llamado Picasso* (Paidós, 2023), is more extensive. It reveals the tensions Picasso experienced when he first arrived in Paris. According to the author, this situation, which he endured until leaving the French capital in 1955, stemmed from the triple stigma of being a foreigner, a radical ideologist and an avant-garde artist. 

## PICASSO’S WORDS 

Amid this sea of interpretative literature, 2023 has also witnessed the publication of two major volumes in Spanish that are a primary source of knowledge about Pablo Picasso. These are *Pablo Picasso. Libro de las conversaciones* (Cántico, 2023) by Rafael Inglada and *Pablo Picasso escritos. 1935–1959* (AKAL, 2023). 

The first brings together 130 conversations and interviews – the largest number published to date – many previously unpublished in Spain. The list of sources includes not only periodicals but also TV and radio interviews as well as four imaginary conversations. A notable feature is the index of hundreds of names of people the artist came across during his lifetime, which makes it easier to handle its more than 600 pages. 

![3.jpg](https://www.museopicassomalaga.org/cms/uploads/3_69c03fbec3.jpg)

The second book, *Pablo Picasso escritos. 1935–1959* (AKAL, 2023), is the first Spanish edition of Picasso’s writings and has come out 34 years after the French version (Gallimard, 1989). This reference work on Picasso’s literary output starts in 1935, the year the artist began writing poems systematically – before that he had done so occasionally. The difficulty of translating a Picasso who wrote in Spanish, in French and alternating between both languages, is undoubtedly the main reason why that this volume has not been available in Spain until 2023. The book was presented at the session entitled [*More about Picasso*](https://www.museopicassomalaga.org/actividades/mas-sobre-picasso-presentacion-del-libro-pablo-picasso-escritos-1935-1959), at the Christine Ruiz-Picasso Auditorium in the Museo Picasso Málaga on October 10, 2023. 

## THE IMPACT OF PICASSO 

Several exhibitions staged in 2023 have been devoted to the impact Picasso’s work has had on other subsequent movements and generations of artists (among them *Picasso. sin título, [The Echo of Picasso](https://www.museopicassomalaga.org/en/exposiciones/the-echo-of-picasso), Sophie Calle. Depende de ti, preciosa* and *Carmen Calvo*), and many publications have also come out on this subject. One is *El proyecto Picasso: acróbatas, pantallas, autorretratos* (Cátedra, 2023), which its author Estrella de Diego describes as ‘a new look at Picasso’s relationship with cinema and the media’. It is a book of essays that relate Picasso’s work to the universe of Pop Art and popular culture. 

![4.jpeg](https://www.museopicassomalaga.org/cms/uploads/4_8be3408375.jpeg)

This survey ends with [*Guernica. Pervivencia de un mito*](https://www.museopicassomalaga.org/proyectos/guernica-pervivencia-de-un-mito-1) (Universidad de Granada, 2023). Edited by José Lebrero Stals and Pepe Karmel, it brings together eleven essays focusing on three themes: the position and reception of *Guernica* in today’s diversified popular culture; how it is represented in ethical debates; and the tension created by the legacy of its images in the artistic balance between the vernacular and the global.

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Picasso’s books fifty years on 

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.

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Picasso and the applied arts

From sketch to object

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. 

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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.

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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.

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Picasso and contemporary fashion

Only suitable for the catwalk

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Interview with Eugenio Carmona

So far, so near

Not only images but also words have played a key role in the year of the <a href="https://celebracionpicasso.es/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Picasso Celebration 1973–2023</a>, an international programme featuring more than fifty exhibitions and events held in cultural institutions of Europe and North America. And it is precisely the context of these commemorations which has stepped up related editorial production and spurred the publishing, editing and revising of many books on Pablo Picasso written from very different approaches, prominent among which are the following:
<h2>THE BIOGRAPHICAL APPROACH</h2>
Descriptions, recreations and accounts of episodes in Picasso’s life are presented in several books published in 2022 and 2023 with three particular features: journalistic language, thorough documentation and documented fiction. These three cases furthermore highlight a trend that has taken on a key role in cultural and social studies over the past years: the adoption of a gynocentric perspective.
Two books have been published in French on the relationship between Picasso and Marie-Thérèse: Sa vie pour Picasso: Marie-Thérèse Walter (Stock, 2022) and Marie-Thérèse Walter &amp; Pablo Picasso: Biographie d’une relation (Nouvelles éditions Scala, 2022). The first, by French journalist and writer Brigitte Benkemoun, has 150 pages, and the second, by art curator Laurence Madeleine, more than 600. Both books, written respectively in journalistic and art-historical language, are less centred on Pablo Picasso and instead pay more attention to Marie-Thérèse.
<img class="image" src="https://www.museopicassomalaga.org/cms/uploads/Las_mujeres_detras_de_Picasso_portada_a3bc67f1ff.JPG" alt="" />
Two publications belong to the docufiction genre (‘non-fiction novel’ or ‘fiction based on real events’, as their authors describe them). They are Las traiciones de Picasso (Turner, 2022) by José María Beneyto, and Las mujeres detrás de Picasso (Lunwerg, 2023) by art historian, communicator and activist Eugenia Tenenbaum. These publications fall halfway between the truthfulness of documentary and the imagination of literary creativity, and are undoubtedly a genre highly representative of the present day.
<h2>THE POLITICAL APPROACH</h2>
There are also many publications that link the artist to political contexts not only throughout his lifetime but also after his death in 1973. It should be remembered that Pablo Picasso lived to be 91 – nine decades that witnessed significant historical events, such as two world wars and the Spanish Civil War.
<img class="image" src="https://www.museopicassomalaga.org/cms/uploads/2_1_ff50f0f5af.jpg" alt="" />
In Picasso con los exiliados (Muñeca Infinita, 2023), which spans just over 150 pages, activist and anarchist writer Mercedes Guillén, the co-founder of Mujeres Libres, tells of her friendship with the artist and how he helped Republican exiles in Paris. This human and everyday account provides very valuable firsthand information about the life of Spanish exiles in France.
The Spanish translation of Anne Cohen-Solal’s book, Un extranjero llamado Picasso (Paidós, 2023), is more extensive. It reveals the tensions Picasso experienced when he first arrived in Paris. According to the author, this situation, which he endured until leaving the French capital in 1955, stemmed from the triple stigma of being a foreigner, a radical ideologist and an avant-garde artist.
<h2>PICASSO’S WORDS</h2>
Amid this sea of interpretative literature, 2023 has also witnessed the publication of two major volumes in Spanish that are a primary source of knowledge about Pablo Picasso. These are Pablo Picasso. Libro de las conversaciones (Cántico, 2023) by Rafael Inglada and Pablo Picasso escritos. 1935–1959 (AKAL, 2023).
The first brings together 130 conversations and interviews – the largest number published to date – many previously unpublished in Spain. The list of sources includes not only periodicals but also TV and radio interviews as well as four imaginary conversations. A notable feature is the index of hundreds of names of people the artist came across during his lifetime, which makes it easier to handle its more than 600 pages.
<img class="image" src="https://www.museopicassomalaga.org/cms/uploads/3_69c03fbec3.jpg" alt="" />
The second book, Pablo Picasso escritos. 1935–1959 (AKAL, 2023), is the first Spanish edition of Picasso’s writings and has come out 34 years after the French version (Gallimard, 1989). This reference work on Picasso’s literary output starts in 1935, the year the artist began writing poems systematically – before that he had done so occasionally. The difficulty of translating a Picasso who wrote in Spanish, in French and alternating between both languages, is undoubtedly the main reason why that this volume has not been available in Spain until 2023. The book was presented at the session entitled <a href="https://www.museopicassomalaga.org/actividades/mas-sobre-picasso-presentacion-del-libro-pablo-picasso-escritos-1935-1959" target="_blank" rel="noopener">More about Picasso</a>, at the Christine Ruiz-Picasso Auditorium in the Museo Picasso Málaga on October 10, 2023.
<h2>THE IMPACT OF PICASSO</h2>
Several exhibitions staged in 2023 have been devoted to the impact Picasso’s work has had on other subsequent movements and generations of artists (among them Picasso. sin título, <a href="https://www.museopicassomalaga.org/en/exposiciones/the-echo-of-picasso" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Echo of Picasso</a>, Sophie Calle. Depende de ti, preciosa and Carmen Calvo), and many publications have also come out on this subject. One is El proyecto Picasso: acróbatas, pantallas, autorretratos (Cátedra, 2023), which its author Estrella de Diego describes as ‘a new look at Picasso’s relationship with cinema and the media’. It is a book of essays that relate Picasso’s work to the universe of Pop Art and popular culture.
<img class="image" src="https://www.museopicassomalaga.org/cms/uploads/4_8be3408375.jpeg" alt="" />
This survey ends with <a href="https://www.museopicassomalaga.org/proyectos/guernica-pervivencia-de-un-mito-1" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Guernica. Pervivencia de un mito</a> (Universidad de Granada, 2023). Edited by José Lebrero Stals and Pepe Karmel, it brings together eleven essays focusing on three themes: the position and reception of Guernica in today’s diversified popular culture; how it is represented in ethical debates; and the tension created by the legacy of its images in the artistic balance between the vernacular and the global.

'Throughout his life, Picasso painted views of the places where he lived and worked. He not only documented the interiors of his homes and studios but also included the tools he used—brushes and paints—as well as his own artworks.
Picasso settled into La Californie, his residence in Cannes, in the summer of 1955 and painted this interior scene Three years later as part of a series of thirteen paintings executed between 15 June and 12 July 1958. Earlier interpretations of his working environment, particularly in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, were defined by rigid geometric construction and a high degree of abstraction, whereas the scenes of the 1950s were characterized by a stylized naturalism similar to Henri Matisse’s decorative interiors.
<img class="image" src="https://www.museopicassomalaga.org/cms/uploads/Picasso_El_estudio_1928_97b0098b77.jpg" alt="" />
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973). The Studio, 1928. Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice. Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York. © Stimmungsbilder1/Alamy Stock Photo © Succession Pablo Picasso. VEGAP, Madrid, 2024
In fact, some historians see the series from La Californie as an homage to Matisse, who had died in 1954. Jean Boggs compares Picasso’s “interior landscapes” to the ones that Matisse made of his villa, Le Rêve, in Vence between 1946 and 1948, as well as the studio interiors that Georges Braque began in 1952. After Matisse’s death, “Picasso painted his «interior landscapes» with views through the elaborately curving Art Nouveau windows to the palm trees behind, which make the interiors by both Matisse and Braque seem enclosed”.
<img class="image" src="https://www.museopicassomalaga.org/cms/uploads/Matisse_Interior_con_cortina_egipcia_1948_431a09e9cd.jpg" alt="" />
Henri Matisse (1869-1954). Interior with Egyptian Curtain, 1948. The Phillips Collection, Washington © The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC © Succession H. Matisse/VEGAP, Malaga, 2024
This colorful nigh scene recalls the famous indoor-outdoor scenes of Saint-Raphaël, when in 1919 Picasso began to combine man-made decorative interiors with exterior views of nature. Here, the artist shares his private world in both a realistic and an intimate manner. In this respect, the present work reflects the warm, bourgeois settings painted by Pierre Bonnard and Édouard Vuillard in the nineteenth century during their Nabis period; their domestic interiors were characterized by flat decorative patterns of bright colors, often confined like cloisonné.
<img class="image" src="https://www.museopicassomalaga.org/cms/uploads/diptico_7826db6182.jpg" alt="" />
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973). Still Life on a Circular Table in Front of an Open Window, 7 November 1919. Museo Picasso Málaga © Museo Picasso Málaga © Succession Pablo Picasso. VEGAP, Madrid, 2024 and Pierre Bonnard (1867–1947). Window with a Dog, Le Cannet, 1927. Private collection © ARTGEN/Alamy Stock Photo © Pierre Bonnard, VEGAP, Malaga, 2024
The Museum possesses additional Images of La Californie: one six-color lithograph and nine drawings, all from 1955. As Klaus Gallwitz aptly remarked, the theme of the studio is a constant in Picasso’s œuvre and, because of its personal, self-indulgent subject, is comparable to his many self-portraits in which the self-analyzing artist looks at the world by looking at himself and his world’.
<img class="image" src="https://www.museopicassomalaga.org/cms/uploads/Dibujos_La_Californie_70cf109088.JPG" alt="" />
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973). La Californie series, Cannes, 23 October 1955. Museo Picasso Málaga. Photo: Rafael Lobato © Museo Picasso Málaga © Succession Pablo Picasso. VEGAP, Madrid, 2024
 
 
 
Text: GIMÉNEZ, Carmen (ed.). Collection Museo Picasso Málaga. Malaga: Museo Picasso Málaga, 2003, vol. I, pp. 149-150.

Jun 17, 1958

La Californie. Interior with Red Armchair 

And yet, despite being one of the most highly acclaimed artists of the twentieth century – with all the consequences and demands of fame – and for all his global reach, Picasso led a predominantly local life. And it is precisely this ‘localness’ that determined many of the essential aspects that make his works recognisable: portraits of relatives and friends, scenes of festivities, the reinterpretation of (Greco-Roman) origins, and vernacular artistic practices, among others.
Málaga, La Coruña, Barcelona, Paris, Boisgeloup, Antibes, Vallauris, Cannes, Vauvernages and Mougins… We find that after spending time in major art hubs Picasso constantly sought refuge in places far away from the bustle of city life – villages surrounded by nature where he played host to other artists, intellectuals and gallery owners, bringing them together around a table and creating a welcoming and relaxed, homely atmosphere without protocol or dress codes.
These scenes are known through the photographs taken by Brassaï, David Douglas Duncan, Edward Quinn, Robert Doisneau, Lucien Clergue and Willy Rizzo, among many other photographers, throughout Picasso’s lifetime. Besides providing a biographical insight into the artist, these photo reports have served to highlight the strong link between Picasso’s experience in a – local – setting with more or less stable characteristics and an oeuvre whose overwhelming presence lives on in our own day.
Four features we might define as local are notable for their constant presence in the photographs of Picasso: nature, food, home and festivities.
<h2>Nature</h2>
‘Picasso may love or hate men, but he adores all animals […]. At the Bateau-Lavoir he had three Siamese cats, a dog, a female monkey, and a tortoise; a tame white mouse lived in a table drawer […] In Vallauris, he had a she-goat; in Cannes, a monkey. As for dogs, not for one day has he been without their company. […] If it had been up to him, he would always have surrounded himself with a regular Noah’s ark’. [1]
<h2>Food</h2>
‘Cathy, Paloma and Claude, nieces and nephews and friends descended upon Vauvenargues for vacations […]. There still were cornucopian lunches, with newly baked bread, local fruit juices, fresh tomatoes and wood-smoked saucisson which overflowed the homemade dinner service – before the daily corrida began’. [2]
<h2>Home</h2>
‘Picasso y Jacqueline lived a frugal, almost monastic existence together. She rarely left the house alone, then only to market or shop for their home, or to search for emergency supplies when he was barricaded in his studio surrounded by dripping canvases. The villa was bare of modern comforts possessing only a few ill-sorted pieces of furniture, no curtains or drapes, unmatched silver and china […] yet it was a noble place’. [3]
<img class="image" src="https://www.museopicassomalaga.org/cms/uploads/03_03c58d9e6f.jpg" alt="" />
Pablo Picasso playing the trumpet in Vallauris during the parade which proceeded the bullfight on his honor, 1954. Photo by Edward Quinn, © edwardquinn.com © Succession Pablo Picasso, VEGAP, Madrid, 2023
<h2>Festivities</h2>
Many of the people who visited Picasso throughout his lifetime describe his cheerful, fun-loving nature. Besides attending with interest and presiding at bullfights and other public and official celebrations, ‘a visit to Picasso is always a new adventure’ [4]: ‘The moment when disguises are calling for most urgently is on the arrival of visitors, especially those from abroad. The less known or the more intimidating his guest may be, the more likely it is that he will find himself confronted by the master not as he expected to find him but as a burlesque little figure wearing, perhaps, a yachting cap with horn-rimmed spectacles, a red nose and black side-whiskers and brandishing a sabre. When this grotesque dance has effectively removed the first embarrassment of meeting, Picasso emerges from behind his mask, his eyes shining with laughter and his expression still enigmatic’. [5]
[1] Brassaï. Conversations with Picasso. Chicago and London, The University of Chicago Press, 1999, p. 266 
[2] David Douglas Duncan. Goodbye Picasso, New York, Grosset &amp; Dunlap, 1974, p. 255 
[3] David Douglas Duncan. op. cit. p. 221 
[4] Roland Penrose. Picasso. His life and work. Nueva York: Schocken Books, 1962, p. 367 
[5] Roland Penrose. Op. cit. p. 361.

Picasso's Universe