The Picasso Museum in Barcelona, the only one wanted by the painter himself, is the most visited in the Catalan capital. In addition to the master’s treasures which make up his permanent collection (4,000 works in total), the ancient and graceful medieval Aguilar palace has for a few days, and until March 2025, housed a formidable temporary exhibition dedicated to Catalan artists who have worked, with Picasso, in Paris at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century.
“The Catalans in Paris” is the story of a group of artists and friends who, between 1889 and 1914, left Catalonia to settle in the capital of art and culture. ‘avant-garde. A rich but little-known history, because it is overshadowed by the presence, and the artistic birth, of Picasso, between Bateau-Lavoir and Boulevard Raspail. A story almost unearthed by the Barcelona exhibition at the Picasso Museum, in a dizzying journey.
The Independent – Charles Baron
In this Paris
Stunning like this Paris, that of the universal exhibitions of 1889, which saw the erection of the Eiffel Tower then of 1900, which established the fairy tale of electricity, the metro and limitless scientific progress. The Paris of Montmartre where slumming at the Moulin Rouge and drinking absinthe in the back of the bars is the latest art of living. This is the Paris of Montparnasse, its flashy brasseries and its endless boulevards where art (finally) makes its revolution. The Paris of poverty too, which the indestructible French romanticism prefers to call “bohemia”. The bohemia of the Bateau-Lavoir where Picasso, barely 19 years old, was starving, like Max Jacobs, Juan Gris, Diego Ribera, Modigliani… Where he completed his blue period and invented Les Demoiselles d’Avignon at the same time as Cubism. This Paris, where darkness and filth rub shoulders with light and the smell of casseroles, where it is five minutes to midnight before the world falls into the butchery of the First World War and the end of illusions. This Paris is also that of vibrant Catalan artists, gifted with talents to which it was time to do justice.
The Independent – Charles Baron
Like an encyclopedia of these Catalan artists
This is done with this XXL exhibition which runs over two floors, and accompanies the visitor in this Paris (including the screening of short current affairs films from the period) to the (re)discovery of these inspired Catalan artists by this very fruitful quarter of a century.
We are of course looking at numerous works by Picasso as a teenager and young adult, on the verge of glory. Works which still blend perfectly with those of Ramon Pichot, Juan Sala, Joaquim Sunyer, Evelio Torent, Ramon Casas, Lluisa Vidal… these Catalan and Barcelona painters, whose work amazes.
The Independent – Charles Baron
And among them, there is Carles Casagemas. Picasso’s friend, met at the Quatre Gats, in Barcelona, and who paid Pablo for his first trip to Paris, in 1900. There Carles fell madly in love with a dancer from the Moulin Rouge, Germaine, who also served as a model to the Demoiselles d’Avignon, and which breaks his heart. Desperate, Carles shot himself in the head, he was 20 years old and left a haggard Pablo, deeply scarred, who dedicated three paintings to his friend, including a striking portrait exhibited in Barcelona.
The Independent – Charles Baron
“From Montmartre to Montparnasse, Catalan artists in Paris (1889-1914)” these are stories of love and friendship, a fragment of art history, a piece of History quite simply told by artists who set out to conquer the world. A very beautiful exhibition, “like an encyclopedia of these Catalan artists”,
underlines Emmanuel Guigon, the French curator of the Picasso Museum in Barcelona.
until March 30, 2025 at the Picasso Museum in Barcelona, Carrer de Montcada. Admission: €7.50 (€6.50 online on the museum website), €15 and €14 for the exhibition and the permanent collection.
