Spain celebrates Picasso

Not to be outdone by Mozartmania, Spain has put together a year-long celebration to mark the 125th anniversary of Picasso’s birth. Exhibitions, ballet and opera perform¬ances using sets and costumes designed by Picasso, lectures, workshops and activities for children and families will take place around the country. In Malaga, Picasso’s birthplace, the Museo Picasso will showcase 73 works from the Musée Picasso, Antibes (the French museum is currently being refurbished), none of which have been seen in Spain before. From October 2006 to February 2007, a special exhibition, ‘Picasso: The Female Figure’, with paintings from private and public collections around the world, will be shown.

At the Museo Picasso Barcelona, an exhibition of over 300 drawings entitled ‘Picasso: A Passion for Drawing’, co-organised with the Picasso Museum, Paris, runs until May this year. From June to October, the Picassos from Antibes will be on display, and from October until February 2007, an exhibition exploring Picasso’s links with the circus will be shown. At Barcelona’s Gran Teatro del Liceu, three ballets with sets and costumes designed by Picasso will be staged during the autumn/winter 2006/07 season, and numerous other lectures, special guided Picasso-themed walks, seminars and workshops will be organised.

This year is also the 25th anniversary of the return to Madrid’s Museo del Prado of Picasso’s masterpiece Guernica. Picasso had refused to let the picture be displayed in Spain under the Franco regime and it was returned by New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 1981. Among the list of Picasso-related events in Madrid, the Prado and the Museo Reina Sofia will jointly present Picasso: Tradition and Avant-garde (from June through September).