Museo Picasso Malaga, Costa del Sol Top Museum
Foundation Casa Natal, Pablo Collection in Native Town, Andalusia
May 14, 2009
Drawn by thriving artists’ communities in Paris and Provence, Pablo Picasso spent much of his life in France, pursuing a long career influenced from the start by his childhood in Malaga on the Costa del Sol. Trained by his father, himself an artist, Picasso soon rejected the constraints of classical conventions. He co-founded Cubism with Braque but never allowed his art to stand still.
His works are displayed in museums worldwide but only Picasso’s birthplace in southern Spain could have nurtured his precocious talent, his love of colours and shapes tempered by social awareness as he observed the poor, beggars, richly-clad matadors and later women.
Foundation Picasso Casa Natal, Picasso’s Birthplace, Southern Spain
The house where Picasso was born stands in old Malaga on the corner of Plaza de la Merced, or Mercy Square, where the child prodigy did his first drawings. Converted into a museum and part of the Foundation Picasso, Casa Natal has been refurbished in 19th century bourgeois style with valuable antiques, including Andalusian furniture and ornate mirrors.
Among the family memorabilia are Picasso’s christening robe, sheets embroidered by his mother, a ceramic fountain from his godmother and a painting of a dovecote by his father. There are photographs of the artist, his parents and sister Lola.
Museo Picasso Malaga, Early Works, Pablo Collection in his Native Town, Andalusia
The Museo Picasso ranks among top museums in Andalusia, claiming a large collection of the artist’s early works. These range from conventional portraits and landscapes to cubism, based on shapes and sometimes enhanced by collage. There are drawings, paintings and etchings.
Favourites include the Child and Doll, Portrait of a Bearded Man and The Poor, all pre-1906, and the Bottle of Bass, Guitar, Newspaper and Glass on a Square Table from the Cubist period.
Museo Picasso Malaga, Costa del Sol Top Museum, Post 1914 Collection
The post 1914 collection begins with the return to classicism favoured at the time of World War I, apparent in the stern Olga Kokhlova with Mantilla. Later, surrealist symbols made a frequent appearance as did nudes, with cat, turban, rape scenes and more.
Women are prominent, conventional such as Olga Seated, Cubist style as in Woman’s Bust with Arms Crossed behind her Head or melting gracefully into the background as in the blue and green Bathers.
Works displayed in chronological order show the surprising ease with which Picasso moved back and forth, from style to style and from painting on canvas or wood to copper etching, pen and ink on newsprint, collage, ceramic and sculpture.
Most striking is the Fruit Bowl, oil on canvas, Claude in Brown and White, oil on plywood, and the large Maternity painted in 1921-22.
The collection includes a number of sculptures, fired clay or bronze like the Head of a Dead man and ceramics such as the pitcher shaped like a barn owl with faun’s head.
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