Barcelona Treasures

Posted on November 24, 2008
Filed Under Tours

The Picasso Museum in Barcelona has one of the most extensive collections of artworks by the 20th century Spanish artist Pablo Picasso. This is one of the most popular and most visited museums in Barcelona. The museum is housed in five adjoining medieval palaces in Barcelona’s Barri Gotic.

The original idea for the museum came from Picasso’s friend, Jamie Sabartés. Picasso had given Sabartés great many paintings, drawings and prints during the course of their friendship. Originally Sabartés had planned to set up a museum based on his collection in Málaga, Picasso’s birthplace. It was Picasso himself who suggested that Barcelona would be more appropriate, given his long standing connections with the city.

The collection doesn’t immediately strike you as being a very extensive one. Among the early work, there are a couple of curious paintings of the beach at Barceloneta as it was 100 years ago, complete with donkeys and none of the landmarks that can be seen there today – no Hotel Arts, no Forum 2004…

The Barcelona Picasso Museum doesn’t contain his most important work – Guernica, for example is in Madrid’s Reina Sofía Art Centre and you’ve got the Paris collections and a new Picasso museum in Malaga.

After Sabartés’s death in 1968, Picasso himself donated a large number of items to the museum, including approximately 1000 items of his early work which his family had been keeping for him ever since the time he first settled in France. This included school books, academic pieces and paintings from Picasso’s Blue Period. There are now more than 3,500 works making up the permanent collection of the museum.

The Museu Picasso reveals Picasso’s relationship with the city of Barcelona, a relationship that was shaped in his youth and adolescence, and continued up until his death.

The Museum has undergone successive renovations and expansions, and it’s currently starting to develop new programmes, activities and services to become a reference place, envisaged to spreading knowledge and to fostering the visitor’s participation and critical views. The Museum wishes to be a dialogue space, exploring new approaches to Picasso’s work and influence and offering new perspectives on the Museum Collection. We invite you to watch the audiovisual Welcome of the Museum director.

Make sure to book your apartment (apartamentos barcelona) well in advance as most of the accommodation (location appartement barcelona) in this city is quite expensive and hard to come by.