Museum Picasso

The Picasso museum is a key reference for understanding the formative years of Pablo Picasso. The genius of the young artist is revealed through the 4,251 works that make up the permanent collection. Furthermore, the Picasso museum, opened in 1963, also reveals his deep relationship with Barcelona: an intimate, solid relationship that was shaped in his adolescence and youth, and continued until his death.

The Picasso museum is very rich in regard to work from the formative years in the life of the artist; it is practically exhaustive up to the Blue Period. The Museum also houses an important representation of works from 1917, and the series Las Meninas (1957) as well as a comprehensive print collection.

Barcelona's Museu Picasso is perhaps the most obvious example of the artist's emotional ties to the city. Created by Picasso's express desire, it was the result of the joint efforts and wills of a group of people: in the first place Jaume Sabartés, Picasso's personal secretary and close friend, but also the artist's wife Jacqueline, the Barcelona society that greatly admired Picasso, and Barcelona City Council, that at the height of the Franco régime acted with the necessary discretion to make the artist's dream of a monographic museum in his beloved city come true.

Joan Ainaud de Lasarte described this relationship in the following terms:

'It isn't a museum to commemorate an origin, but the result of a friendship and the connection between a man and his city, the friendship between Jaume Sabartés and Picasso, and Picasso's memories of Barcelona.'