An exhibition on Picasso in Sarzana on the 50th anniversary of his death

The city of Sarzana is dedicating an exhibition to Pablo Picasso (Malaga, 1881 - Mougins, 1973) on the 50th anniversary of his death: the City of Sarzana with the organization of Paloma, a project of Comediarting, and in collaboration with the Museo Casa Natal Picasso de Málaga, is in fact setting up the exhibition Pablo Picasso, the Origins of Myth. The exhibition, scheduled from April 8 to July 16, 2023, is one of the few cultural projects organized in Italy in the anniversary year. Curated by Lola Durán Úcar, it gathers more than 100 including lithographs, aquatints, etchings, punteseches, ceramics and a painting Tête de femme, an oil painting from a private collection inspired by one of Picasso’s muses, Dora Maar.

Picasso’s printmaking activity is one of the most important of his career. With the series of the Barcelona Suite and the Suite des Saltimbanques, visitors will get close to Picasso’s early creative years, the bohemian Paris of Montmartre, the melancholy blue period or the much sweeter pink period. He will walk among portraits of young women, admire circus scenes, and be confronted with the figure of Harlequin, taken from the commedia dell’arte. The tauromaquia or arte de torear , represent, instead, the theme of bullfighting, one of Picasso’s great passions. Bullfighting was a place for him linked both to his childhood, when the artist went to the bullring with his father in Malaga, and to his nostalgia for his home country of Spain. In the first of these series Picasso also pays homage to Francisco de Goya, a painter who had illustrated the fate of Pepe Hillo a few centuries earlier. Another series featured in the exhibition is Dans l’Atelier, a set of lithographs and lithographic reproductions published in 1957 in La Californie, the studio house he bought in 1955 seduced by its isolation and splendid view of the Bay of Cannes and which he shared with Jacqueline Roque. Here art and life intersected: at La Californie Picasso studied, worked, and met friends and visitors. In Dans l’Atelier various themes compete and dialogue with each other; this is the case with still lifes, the most important genre in Picasso’s painting after the representation of the figure.

The exhibition also features a selection of nine photographs taken by Robert Capa of the Picasso family on vacation in Golfe Juan, France, in August 1948. Capa, who had met Françoise Gilot years earlier in Paris, captures the artist’s more intimate side with his beloved and their son Claude, the couple’s first child. They play on the beach in front of the calm waters of the Côte d’Azur, strolling and having fun, in snapshots that transport us to Picasso’s most personal moments, outside his studio and his creative universe.

Finally, the exhibit presents, in the last section, a selection of nine photographs of Pablo Picasso from the Gyenes bequest of the Museo Casa Natal Picasso in Malaga, taken by Juan Gyenes, a Hungarian-born photographer who is considered a master of light, a classic of Spanish photographic art. Selected snapshots in this exhibition correspond to three encounters between Picasso and Gyenes.

“Picasso’s family was Ligurian and so this is an exhibition that also acquires an even deeper meaning because of that, it is a return to his origins,” explains exhibition curator Lola Durán Úcar. “If there is anything that can go so far as to explain Picasso’s complex personality, it is his passion, his curiosity, his immense eagerness to know and experiment. Picasso uses a marked and unmistakable pictorial language, full of genius, that revolutionized the 20th century and made him a myth.”

Open days: Tuesday through Sunday. Closed Mondays. Hours: 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. Ticket: full 12 euros, reduced 8 euros for Sarzana residents, young people aged 12 to 25, over 65, people with special needs, teachers, military personnel, MIC staff, Sarzana City Council employees. Free for under 12, card-carrying journalists, tour guides, ICOM members, accompanying persons with special needs. For families of 3 people € 24 and for families of 4 people € 32. For groups and school groups, the Fortress and Museum can also be visited after opening hours, with prior reservation and the possibility of a guide. It is also possible to book the combined visit with the Sarzanello Fortress. Info: www.fortezzafirmafede.it

An exhibition on Picasso in Sarzana on the 50th anniversary of his death

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