Exhibition «Picasso Year» on the 50th anniversary of his death, this Monday at the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid. /
“He did not capture or imprison the women who lived with him” says his grandson Bernard, who judges the gender debate “healthy and positive”
The indisputable genius of Pablo Picasso and the most lurid profiles of his controversial personality will coexist in the celebration of the ‘Picasso Year’ that commemorates the 50th anniversary of his death throughout 2022 and 2023. A program that includes more than 50 acts, with 42 exhibitions in seven countries and that will have a budget of six million euros -three contributed by the State and three by Telefónica, the main sponsor-, and which this Monday the Ministers of Culture of France and Spain presented before the ‘Guernica’.
In the exhibitions and congresses, the alleged misogyny of Picasso and his complex and unequal relationship with women will be debated. A “healthy and positive debate if it is of quality” according to Bernard Ruiz-Picasso, grandson of the genius from Malaga who joined the presentation. He warned that his grandfather was “a son of his time” and that the women who lived with him “knew what they were up to.” “He did not capture or imprison women. They knew what was there. A woman knows when there is a risk of getting a little burned. That is her life, and everyone lives it as she wants, “he assured. “Picasso, as a great artist of the 20th century, brought to the table great questions that we are now discussing,” he added.
“If there is an artist who defines the 20th century, who represents it with all its cruelty, its violence, its passion, its excesses and its contradictions, it is undoubtedly Pablo Picasso.” This was declared by the head of Culture and Sports, Miquel Iceta, before the most universal work of Picasso in the Reina Sofía Museum, who made a detailed review of the acts of the fiftieth anniversary.
The program for the fiftieth anniversary of the painter’s death includes fifty activities with 42 exhibitions in 7 countries, six of them in Spain
For his French colleague, Rima Abdul Malak, “Picasso’s work continues to exercise a real fascination throughout the world.” “Abundant, inventive, and often radical, he does it for his artistic strength, of course, but also for his political strength, for which he never ceases to be reread, revised, and reinterpreted.”
no concealments
But the ambitious program for the ‘Picasso Year’ will fly over that debate on Picasso’s relationship with women, inappropriate and reprehensible for many from the current criteria of equality. «We are not going to hide anything» agreed the Spanish minister and his French colleague «In the debates the gender issue will be considered and Picasso will be shown as he is. The greatness of his work is superimposed, but he does not hide anything »Iceta insisted. «We present Picasso in all his dimensions. I don’t think that life and work can be separated, but I don’t think that life hides the work of Picasso, who is the son of his time and with all the contradictions of a passionate character». “We don’t hide anything and we will get to know him as an artist and as a person,” Iceta said.
“That the part of violence that is in it is known, it should not be covered up, I believe in the debate,” said his French colleague. “We cannot summarize her work in her relationship with women,” said Rima Abdul Malak, who recognized herself as a feminist and fighter for equality. The French minister also referred to the complexity of the figure of Picasso and pointed out that his relationship with women is already addressed in one of the exhibitions scheduled by the Brooklyn Museum in New York
About fifty activities are planned in different countries. Two conferences and 42 exhibitions have been scheduled so far: 16 in Spain, 12 in France, 7 in the United States, two in Germany, two in Switzerland, one in Monaco, one in Romania and one in Belgium.
Among the shows, those that host Spanish museums such as the Thyssen and the Prado, the Metriopolitan and the Guggenheim in New York and Bilbao, the Picasso museums in Paris, Barcelona and Malaga or the Parisian Pompidou, which will bring together more than 2,000 drawings, stand out. The finishing touch will be the exhibition ‘1906: The great transformation’ that the Reina Sofía Museum will offer at the end of 2023 and that will deal with a crucial year for the evolution of Picasso and will include the work seized from Jaime Botín.
France and the Picasso family lend more than 700 works that will move around the world in the coming months. The exhibitions are being held at a more than delicate economic time, with the most expensive insurance and transportation costs in history, which will force the organizers to “deal with overpricing, according to Iceta.