Prepared jointly by France and Spain for 18 months, the “Picasso Year” will mobilize 38 highly relevant institutions in Europe and the United Statesthe Spanish Minister of Culture, Miquel Iceta, told the press on Monday at the presentation ceremony held at the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid.
These exhibitions will show all the facets of the Spanish artist, born in Malaga (southern Spain) in 1881 and who died in Mougins (southeastern France) in 1973, accompanied in parallel by a series of “colloquia” and “debates” on the painter and his work, added his French counterpart, Rima Abdul Malak.
The celebrations will start on September 23 at the Fundación Mapfrein Madrid, with the exhibition “Pablo Picasso and the dematerialization of sculpture” and will run until April 2024, when the retrospective “The Paris of the Moderns (1905-1925)” ends, which will be exhibited at the Petit Palais de the French capital.
🗞️ Spain and France present the program of activities to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the death of #Picasso 🏛️🎨
📌 Two congresses and 42 exhibitions have been scheduled, distributed in countries such as Spain, France, the United States or Germanyhttps://t.co/izB9mF8f93 pic.twitter.com/Meme4DeZcR
– Ministry of Culture and Sports (@culturagob)
September 12, 2022
The events in tribute to the Spanish painter – whom the French Minister described as “the most famous and emblematic artist of modern art” – will be held mainly in Spain, France and the United States, although there will also be activities in Germany, Switzerland, Romania and Belgium .
Participating institutions include the Metropolitan New York Museum of Art (met), the Prado Museum in Madrid, the Guggenheim in Bilbao, the Pompidou Center in Paris and the Picasso museums in Barcelona and Paris.
Our goal is to vindicate the artistic legacy of Picasso and the validity of his work
“Our goal is to vindicate Picasso’s artistic legacy and the validity of his work,” Miquel Iceta stressed in front of the Guernica painting, one of the most famous in the world, the work of the painter from Malaga in 1937.
This painting that immortalized the massacre that took place in the city of Guernica – bombed in April 1937 by Nazi aviation in support of General Franco during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) – is “a manifesto for peace” at a time when that the war is raging at the gates of Europe, Rima Abdul Malak assessed, referring to the conflict in Ukraine.