Museu Picasso

31 March 2015, Tuesday

Today we are on our own to explore Barcelona. We are heading via taxi to the Museu Picasso in La Ribera district of the city. Many of the buildings in this area were built late in the Medieval era on narrow streets with high walls to protect from the sun. It is quiet now because it is nine in the morning and the city has yet to awaken. We join the line of (early-rising) tourists and wait for the doors to open. We all follow like sheep from one door to the next anxious to be included; showing our tickets to the gatekeeper, hoping we haven't made a mistake of some kind. At last the doors open and everyone herds in to the lovely space. It is open and airy with friendly guides urging people along.

This museum is housed in five medieval palaces dating from the 13th and 14th centuries.
Each of the buildings are built around a patio with an exterior staircase to the main floors.
The permanent collection is focused on Picasso's early work and shows how talented he was even as a young boy drawing palomas (doves) and other small animals. There are drawings and paintings dating from 1890-1917. The collection is organized chronologically so we can see Picasso's progression from painting and drawing realistically to his cubist paintings in primary colors. The highlight is the exceptional forty-four piece series called Las Meninas inspired by the masterpiece of the same name by Velasquez.

 The second hour is spent viewing Picasso/Dali Dali/Picasso, a compelling exhibit showing the way both artists competed with each other, influenced one another and liked each other.
They were both involved in the Surrealist project and responded simultaneously to the horrors of the Spanish Civil War. There are drawings and paintings from time they spent
during 1910 in Cadaques and their mutual influence is visible. Paintings made about the same subject, are hung side by side so the differences and similarities are truly visible. One 1917 example is the painting of a woman called Olga by Picasso and My Sister by Dali. Dali was already turning things upside down... In the mid 1930s with the rise of Franco, both artists made tortured works expressing the human suffering caused by war.
In Picasso's The Lie and Dream of Franco, images emerge that would later appear in Guernica. Dali's 1935 Sketch for Premonition of Civil War, clearly shows Dali's sense of doom. 

We leave and look around for a cafe to enjoy a rest and a cortado.  Then we walk toward the Sea and El Born district named after the19th century market that dominated the area. Today this market is an archeological dig recovering the site of part of La Ribera demolished after the army of Spain's King Philip V defeated Catalonia in the 1714 War of Succession.

 

We walk on searching for the Sea, passing the Barcelona Zoo, clearly walking nowhere.
We rest at small shaded pool and then walk toward traffic for a taxi ride back to the hotel.
We spend the rest of the afternoon in the shaded safety of the hotel rooftop and later,
eat a mediocre meal at an Eixample restaurant, Pomarada, recommended by Oriol Braso as an opportunity to dine in a courtyard patio characteristic of the area. It turns out to be a tourist restaurant with typical Spanish fare---olives, baked goat cheese,chocolate ice cream.

We return to our lodgings and prepare for our departure to Granada....