BANCAJA FOUNDATION. Pl. Tattoo, 23
The Bancaja Foundation has it very close at hand, It has one of the most complete collections of Picasso's graphic work internationally.. This is the lime. But the problem is that it is not easy to say something new about the most decisive and influential artist of the 20th century., the one that invoices the most each year at auctions, the one that receives the most praise from critics. Yet, The Bancaja Foundation throws itself into the ring again and again. This time to show on Picasso. The joy of livinga and good living with a vitalistic attitude in love with bulls and pigeons, mountebanks and harlequins, dance and women, to which, seems to be, He didn't treat himself very well in his private life.. In the first room we are greeted with pieces of Mediterranean ceramics and African masks that decisively influenced the art of the man from Malaga., For example, in the mythical Ladies of Avignonwith which cubism started and turned the world of global art upside down. That same 1907 Picasso painted his only Fauvist work, The reapers, which we can see in this exhibition as a great attraction because Carmen Cervera has rarely let it out of her Thyssen Museum..
The other festive themes that appear in Picasso's work are those of the painter and the model, influence of the great masters of painting; the world of the circus that fascinated him during the pink period and to which he continually returned; bullfighting, for which he felt true devotion (Even in exile he managed to attend bullfights in Arles); California, an art deco villa on the Côte d'Azur that he bought with his second wife Jacqueline Roque – whom he photographed countless times – to live one of the happiest stages of his life; the sketches of sets and costumes for three Russian ballets; and the doves, who were very present in his childhood. Already wholesale, his friend and rival Henri Matisse gave him one that, bored, ended up illustrating the official poster of the World Peace Congress that was held in Paris in 1949. S.M.
