The Man Who Filled Eight Museums

By Meredith Rideout

“Give me a museum and I’ll fill it.” This is one of Pablo Picasso’s most famous quotes. Picasso lived up to his word. He not only filled one museum, but eight museums across Europe. Each museum is dedicated to the Spaniard himself and highlights hundreds of his masterpieces. The Picasso museum in Barcelona, Spain, is a great travel choice. Picasso gives his audience a look into his life through his paintings. You can learn about Picasso’s perspective on the events of his life through his brush strokes. He was always intentional with his use of light and dark colors to draw attention to the centerpiece of his paintings. The expressions of the faces in his paintings often conveyed pain or suffering. It is the audience’s job to figure out the backstory of the person being painted. Picasso’s style of art morphed over time as he traveled through his different periods, but he consistently used simple shapes and a small range of colors to paint objects, people and landscapes. This is reflected in the architectural style of his Barcelona museum.

The architecture of the Picasso museum in Barcelona reflects his use of simple shapes to create abstraction.

Tickets to the Picasso museum in Barcelona are only 33 euros for a guided tour and 17 euros for a walk through tour. The walk through tour includes an audio guide that gives details on some of his famous paintings in the museum. The museum is easily accessible by metro and a close distance to the Barcelona city center. Taking a visit to the Barcelona Picasso museum is the perfect afternoon activity for any art-lover.

Three of Picasso’s paintings shown in the museum specifically stand out for their simple nature and deep intentionality. These paintings are Motherhood, The Pigeons and Woman with Mantilla. Let’s dive deep into discussing these three masterpieces and discovering what inspired Picasso to create them.

This shows Picasso’s sculptures that keep true to his artistic style of using emotions and imagination for inspiration.

Motherhood

Maternity is a frequent theme in Picasso’s paintings throughout the museum. One maternity painting that stands out is called Motherhood from Picasso’s Blue Period. This painting was created in 1903 and depicts the love a mother has for her young child.

This painting, Motherhood, reveals the influences of the French painter and theorist Maurice Denis and the painter Puvis de Chavannes.

Picasso’s maternity scenes from the time of 1901 to 1905, as well the other figures from the Blue Period, reveal the heavy personal, social and psychological burden of the characters. The faces of the mother and child show resigned expressions that convey poverty and helplessness. The hand that protects the young child is purposefully elongated to show protection. The fresh tones of the faces create a contrast between the blue background of the composition. This also creates a foreshadow for Picasso’s later monumental style. The painting is on a slanted surface because of Picasso’s technical mastery of pastel and charcoal. The slant helps to sustain these materials for a long period of time.

This painting, also from Picasso's Blue Period, shows many similarities to Motherhood by how the mother’s elongated hands are protecting her child.

Picasso’s Motherhood was a foreshadow piece for his later monumental style shown here. This painting, Guernica, shows contrast between the light faces and dark background, which is a common theme during this time.

Pigeons

A particular room in the Barcelona Picasso museum sparks the interest of many people who enter it. It is a small room filled with paintings of pigeons. Not mountain ranges, portraits, or abstract pieces, just pigeon paintings. Many of Picasso’s paintings depicted the immense sadness of his Blue Period or gave insight to the personality of his relatives and friends with a portrait. The pigeon room catches many people off guard by its peculiarity.

Olivia Davies, an art-lover visiting the Barcelona Picasso museum from London, England, explains how she thoroughly enjoyed the pigeon room. When asked, “What was Picasso’s inspiration for the pigeon pieces?” Olivia explained how the pigeons were Picasso’s tribute to Matisse, a fellow artist and good friend of Picasso. Picasso did not normally paint what he saw, he usually drew upon his imagination for artistic inspiration. Picasso’s friend Matisse was famous for drawing what he saw in nature. This inspired Picasso to paint the pigeons he watched scurrying around from the window of his art studio. These pieces are simple when you first look at them but they honor a very influential man.

The pigeon paintings paid homage to the sunny window scenes by a fellow painter, Matisse, who had died in 1954.

As shown in this painting, Matisse worked with sinuous lines and rich colors to mimic what he observed in nature.

Picasso’s The Pigeons painting was one example of his common artistic theme of windows. Many of Picasso’s paintings such as Rooftops of Barcelona and The Street of Rivera De Sant Joan also showed Picasso’s perspective of looking out a window. Picasso strived to bring together the private world of the interior with the public world of the exterior. He linked both the images of daydream and nostalgia with his window paintings.

This painting, The Street of Rivera De Sant Joan, conveys the dynamism of daily life in a corner of the city with its large, striking brush strokes.

Rooftops of Barcelona reveals another example of a window painting where Picasso links his inner and outer worlds. In the painting, the paint is applied in a random manner with short irregular strokes and long vertical ones to show the hustle and bustle of the city.

Woman in a Mantilla

Antonia Iglesias is a tour guide at the Barcelona Picasso museum and a huge art fanatic. Her favorite painting in the museum is Mujer con Mantilla or Woman in a Mantilla. She confidently explains how the painting is colorful and full of life. She sees it as cheerful and hopeful. Woman in Mantilla is an unfinished painting. The woman’s face, mantilla and top half of her body are painted in bright colors. The bottom half of her body is just a pencil sketch. Antonia spoke on how an unfinished painting is like a promise. The painting is already filled with beauty and the unfinished sketch is just glimmering hope for the future. After conducting research on this piece, it is found that there is very little description on the painting’s purpose or creation. Whether the painting was left to be unfinished or just an unintentional error is unclear. It is up to the audience’s interpretation of Picasso’s breathtaking art process.

The gaze of the women in the painting is striking and seems to look right through you.

Picasso's Abstraction

The meaning of Picasso’s paintings are usually not what they appear to be on the surface. They are deep-rooted in emotion and imagination. Each brush stroke, use of color and light is intentional to the overall message of the piece. Picasso prided himself on his use of abstraction. He purposefully wanted to leave room for audience interpretation. He hoped his art would speak a unique message to every person who glanced at it. I’m sure that The Pigeons and The Woman in the Mantilla paintings spoke a different message to Olivia and Antonia. That’s the cool thing about art, it reflects what is happening in real life. In the wise words of Picasso himself, “The world doesn't make sense, so why should I paint pictures that do?” Picasso’s genius mind and magnificent masterpieces will be praised for an endless amount of years.

This wall of paintings shows just a few of Picasso’s 50,000 art pieces he created in his lifetime.