The Museu Picasso in Barcelona

The Museu Picasso in Barcelona is the most evident proof of the fondness and appreciation Picasso felt for the Catalan capital. The Museum would not have opened its doors on Carrer Montcada in 1963 had it not been, on the one hand, for the will of the artist himself, and on the other, for the determination and commitment of several people: first of all, his personal secretary and great friend Jaume Sabartés, whose works by Picasso were the original core of the Museum’s collection; the artist’s wife, Jacqueline Picasso; members of Barcelona’s civil society who were both admirers and friends of Picasso, especially the Gaspar and Gili families, and finally, the Barcelona City Council. But the history of the Museum would not be the same without a key event that took place in 1970, when Picasso decided to donate to the city of Barcelona all the works that until then had been kept by his relatives in the family residence on Passeig de Gràcia.

The collection, made up of around 5,000 pieces, is the most complete that exists from Picasso’s initial period, which makes the Museum a reference centre for the study of the artist’s early work. In this sense, exceptional series of pieces carried out in Málaga, La Coruña, Barcelona, Madrid and Horta de Sant Joan stand out, testifying to the artist’s solid academic training, strong artistic personality and emerging creative freedom. Additionally, the collection is rich in work from his youth, which shows Picasso’s rapid assimilation of the leading avant-garde trends in Barcelona at the turn of the century and in Paris during the Belle Époque. Also worth noting are the series of pieces belonging to his so-called Blue Period, the oil paintings he painted in Barcelona in 1917 and the complete series of “Las Meninas”, with which he offered his personal interpretation of Velázquez’s painting of the same name. And last but not least, the remarkable collection of graphic work and the set of 41 ceramics that Jacqueline Picasso donated in 1982.

In 2011, the Museum expanded to include the annexed building of the Centre for Knowledge and Research, which houses the archive and the library and where a valuable set of documentary, photographic and bibliographic collections on the artist and his work are kept.