PICASSO, la exposición del Reina-Prado

Picasso and Tradition: the exhibition at the Prado
The exhibition brings together the most important group of works by Picasso seen in Spain since the 1981 exhibition organised to celebrate the return of Guernica. It is unlikely that such a group of works will be assembled again in any future retrospective on the artist.
Within the context of Picasso’s dual perspective on tradition and modernity which forms the argument of the exhibition, the Museo del Prado will be offering a unique occasion to compare the artist’s work with that of the masters of the past whom he had so admired since his early years. By exhibiting more than 30 works by Picasso alongside a selection of paintings by some of the greatest artists represented in its collections, the Prado is also responding to Picasso’s known interest in comparing his work with that of the great names of the past. When Picasso made a donation of works to the Musée d’art moderne in Paris in 1947, his only condition was that ten of his own paintings could be seen for one night in the Spanish paintings galleries of the Musée du Louvre.
This artistic dialogue established with the Prado will now allow the visitor to see both the radical transformation of Picasso’s artistic idiom over the course of his life, from his earliest years to his maturity, as well as to discern the influence of the art of the past in his paintings, including those connections and affinities with past tradition that make him the last of the great classical masters.

Picasso’s artistic training and the Museo del Prado
Picasso trained in the classical academic tradition. The son of a painter who devoted his activities to teaching, he received a meticulous artistic education which he completed in line with the normal academic procedure that had prevailed in 19th-century Spain, including the study of Old Master paintings in the Museo del Prado.
The present exhibition opens with a section on the young Picasso’s encounter with the Museo del Prado, and includes the first sketches that he made of various works by Velázquez (Calabacillas and El Niño de Vallecas) during his first trip to the Museum at the age of 15. It also includes other records of his impressions during his time as a student at the Academia de San Fernando between 1897 and 1898. Among these is a letter to his friend Bas which says: “[...] The museum of paintings is beautiful: Velázquez, outstanding; by El Greco, some magnificent heads; Murillo does not convince me in all his works; by Titian a very fine Dolorosa; [...]”

A major retrospective
Starting with his early contacts with the Parisian avant-garde at the beginning of the century, the Central Gallery at the Prado then displays a succession of outstanding examples of works from every period in Picasso’s career. These reveal his direct contact with the masters that he so admired and defended, in particular the three great names of the so-called Spanish School: El Greco, Velázquez and Goya. Alongside them can be seen works by the other great artists represented in the Prado’s collections: Titian, Veronese, Caravaggio and Poussin, related to Picasso’s paintings either in the form of direct quotations or through particular affinities.
The magnificent selection of paintings by Picasso in this key retrospective of the artist’s work begins with the Self-portrait with Palette of 1906 (Philadelphia Museum), painted by the 25-year old artist. It concludes with the first portrait from the “Musketeers” series of 1967 in which the 86-year old artist did not conceal his debt to the masters of the past, but rather explicitly stated it by signing his painting “Domenicos Theotocopoulos van Rijn da Silva”.
The exhibition follows a strict chronological arrangement and includes some of Picasso’s masterpieces, progressing from the Blue and Pink periods (1903-1906) to the radicalism of the Cubist experiment (1908-1913), the “Return to Order” and the classical canon in the inter-war years (1917-1932), the difficult war years (1936-1945), and on to the artist’s last decades (1955-1964).

Picasso and Las Meninas
The chronological arrangement is interrupted in the centre of the Gallery in order to celebrate the encounter between Picasso and Velázquez. Among Picasso’s direct references to the Museo del Prado as revealed in this exhibition, the series on Las Meninas painted between August and September 1957 is particularly important. This series is now in the Museo Picasso in Barcelona, to which it was donated by the artist. Over the course of two months, Picasso created around 50 studies and versions of Velázquez’s most celebrated composition. For the first time, the exhibition will enable visitors to see a sizeable selection of Picasso’s series alongside Velázquez’s painting, resulting in an unprecedented dialogue.
As a conclusion to this dialogue with the Old Masters, the exhibition ends with further outstanding examples of Picasso’s relationship with the great figures of modern painting. These include his Reclining Nude, which is a direct quotation from Goya’s Naked Maja, and his versions of works by some of the leading French artists of the 19th century, such as The Women of Algiers after Delacroix (final version), and The Déjeuner sur l’herbe after Monet.