F. BANCAJA. Pl. Tattoo, 23
The idolatry towards Picasso is so great these days that it is surprising that there was a time in which his work was left behind, stale and outdated. But if, there was. After the cubist revolution, of the Ladies of Avignon and Guernica, Picasso, the myth of the Avant-garde, he stayed in the shadow of his castle, isolated from the world (connected only through television) and unable to tune in with the modernity of his time and the new artistic currents of the moment (poor art, minimal…). He continued to rust, clinging to his usual themes. –the nudes of women and the artist and the model- while other great figures of art such as Marcel Duschamp emerged as a reference for new generations. However, never lost his mastery, especially in the art of engraving, which is what the Bancaja Foundation recovers in the exhibition Picasso. Models of desire. The man from Malaga created the Suite 347 already octogenarian, and the 156 ninety-year-old, demonstrating unrivaled technical expertise and imagination, although the theme... err that err. He followed his thing, obsessed by desire, corporeality and bodily pleasure, although (or precisely because of that) his sexual vigor was already a thing of the past. Now he is no longer the subject of desire, but simple voyeur nostalgic for a wish that can no longer be fulfilled. To close the year, The Bancaja Foundation displays its enormous collection of Picasso etchings full of naked bodies and sexual drive, circus artists, characters from La Celestina, musketeers of Alexandre Dumas and men looking at naked women (Degas, the painter himself, the Pope, a child who sneaks into a women's hammam...). In the artistic, pure virtuosity of genius, thematically, the great constant in the history of art: men who look and act, passive naked women who are objects of desire. S.M.
