Did you know that Pablo Picasso was born in Malaga and considered the most important artist of the 20th century?
Pablo Picasso, born in October 1881 in Malaga, inherited the talent from his father but had to learn all techniques from an early age to break all the rules and become the most influential artist of the 20th century! You may like Picasso's style or not, but definitely, you may love some of his artworks from the early blue and rose period. Like all art students, he studied at different art academies and copied the great masters at the Prado Museum in Madrid. He painted his first oil painting at the age of 9, achieved to draw like Raphael at the age of 15, and needed his whole life to "paint like a child", according to his own words at an old age.
As a licensed guide to the Malaga Picasso Museum, I am personally an admirer of his art and passionate about his creation so much that I followed his footsteps not only here in Malaga, in his hometown, but also to other places related to his later life, especially in France.
I grew up with a reproduction of one of Picasso's Maternities in my parent's bedroom and, of course, had no clue who Picasso was as a child. In my young years, Picasso still was alive, and he was in every magazine of that time, and articles about him, his women and his art appeared each week. He was as famous as a footballer or film star nowadays!
When I came to Malaga for the first time, I learned with surprise that he was born here, and sometime later, I went to Paris and followed his traces at Montmartre, where all the famous painter of the early 20th century worked. In those days, Paris was not yet the city of mass tourism it is today!
Later I could admire some of his paintings in the recently inaugurated Centre Pompidou, the so-called "Beaubourg" in Paris, while I was still was working in the fashion industry, and I could not expect that someday I would become a guide of his museum in Malaga. When his famous painting Guernica returned to Spain, I visited it in Madrid. You see that my relationship with him goes far back in time!
Some years ago, I travelled with my husband to the French Riviera to visit where he was living and working in his later life and where he is buried. After many decades of living in Paris, Picasso moved to southern France after the Second World War when he was in a romantic relationship with his young muse Françoise Gilot. I followed his steps at Madoura, in Vallauris, where he was creating his ceramics and where he met his last muse and second spouse, Jacqueline Roque after Françoise abandoned him. I found his artworks in the Chapel of the Picasso Museum in Vallauris, the Palace Grimaldi in Antibes, and the Ratue Museum in Arles. I visited the Roman amphitheatre, now a bullring in Arles, where he watched the bullfights. I searched his castle in Vauvenargues, where he is buried, and I found his mansion "Notre Dame de Vie", where he spent the last years of his life until he died in 1973.
I was absolutely fascinated by his work, his life and impressed by the wealth he achieved during his lifetime, contrary to so many painters who eventually became famous "post mortem". I offer a special Picasso Route in Malaga, concentrated in both museums: his birthplace and the Picasso Museum. The permanent exhibition displays artworks of all main periods of his life and belong to Picasso's private collection, as they were never meant to sell. Allow me to show you Picasso's Malaga during a visit!
