Do not doubt it, if there is an artist that you will hear about throughout 2023, this is none other than Picasso. Fifty years have passed since the death of the most famous creator of the 20th century and although he does not need to be remembered - he has never stopped being there - the time has come to look at him with new eyes. But museums here and on the other side of the Atlantic will live not only from Picasso. The exhibition schedule is full of old acquaintances that are worth returning to (Miró, Vermeer, Sorolla, Tàpies, Plensa, Antonio López, Juan Muñoz, Lucian Freud...), but it also offers infinite possibilities for those who like to travel through back roads. There will be much to see and enjoy.
The Picasso Celebration 1973-2023, organized in collaboration between the Spanish and French governments, includes fifty exhibitions around the world. In the midst of a debate on misogyny, masculinity, creativity and the figure of the "genius", the Brooklyn Museum will host Picasso and feminism (from 2/6 to 24/9) from the perspective of a curatorial team that includes the Australian comedian Hannah Gadsby.
Barcelona will have its own feast, and twice, with Miró-Picasso, an exhibition that will take place simultaneously at the Fundació Miró and the Picasso Museum (from 10/19 to 2/25) and that will offer an unprecedented look at the friendship that maintained and their coincidences and divergences in the artistic field. The influence of El Greco on the work of the man from Malaga will be studied at the Museo del Prado (from 13/6 to 17/9); the New York Metropolitan will link cubism with the tradition of 'trompe l'oeil' (from 10/17 to 1/22); British designer Paul Smith will rearrange the collection of the artist's museum in Paris in full color (from 7/3 to 6/8); the ceramicist Picasso will visit the Museu del Disseny de Barcelona (from June to September) and the sculptor will visit the Picasso Málaga (from 9/5 to 10/9) and the Guggenheim Bilbao (from 28/9 to 14/1). Another peak moment will be at the Reina Sofía, with Picasso 1906: the great transformation (from 11/14 to 3/4).
Picasso will not be the only one blowing out candles in the coming months. Joan Miró, whose 40th anniversary of his death is being commemorated, will travel to the Guggenheim in Bilbao to review his Parisian stage (Joan Miró. The absolute reality. Paris, 1920–1945, from 2/10 to 5/11 ). 100 years after his death, the light of Sorolla will tour the country with thematic exhibitions (the program has not yet been announced), among which the one at the Museum of Fine Arts in Valencia stands out from the 46 paintings in the Collection of the María Cristina Masaveu Peterson Foundation (from 6/26 to 10/1). And in the last months of the year, Tàpies will also start warming up for the celebration of its centenary -which will last until the end of 2024– with a retrospective in the center of Brussels Bozar (from 15/9 to 8/11 curated by Manuel Borja-Villel Another beloved artist, Juan Muñoz, who would have turned 70 this year, will have a double exhibition in Madrid, at Sala Alcalá 31 (from 2/14 to 6/11) and at CA2M (from 6/15 to 7 /1).
It will be one of the events of this season in Europe. The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam will open on February 10 (until June 4) the largest retrospective in history dedicated to the great painter of the Dutch Golden Age. A unique opportunity to see 28 of the 34 paintings that he has attributed. It will not be easy for it to happen again in many decades given the fragility of the works and the difficulty in obtaining loans.
It is hard to believe, but the truth is that Antonio López, the 86-year-old master of realism, will have had to wait until 2023 to have a monograph in Barcelona. It will be at La Pedrera (from 9/22 to 1/14), after the exhibition that this same space will dedicate to Jaume Plensa's relationship with literature and especially poetry (from 3/31 to 7/23).
The reader who has come this far may have had the impression of having gone back in time. Have women disappeared from museum programming again? Not exactly, but the vindictive joy seems to be behind us. Even so, in Spain you will be able to see important exhibitions by the Japanese Yayoi Kusama, the world's most popular artist, who will tour her seven-year career at the Guggenheim Bilbao (from 6/27 to 10/8).
The surrealist Leonora Carrington, one of the protagonists of the last Venice Biennale, will finally have her first exhibition in Spain, at the Mapfre Foundation in Madrid (from February 11). And the Barcelonan Eva Fàbregas, whose inflatable sculptures also had an impact in the Venetian exhibition, will be at the Botín Center in Santander (20/5 to 15/10) coexisting with the new glass sculptures and contemplative spaces designed by Roni Horn (from 1 /4 to 10/9).
At the MACBA we will have the opportunity to rediscover the work of the Berlin-based Casablanca artist Bouchra Khalili and to see for the first time the pioneer in the field of site-specific installation and moving images Nancy Holt (from 6/29 to 10/29). And already outside our borders, London will host with expectation the several times postponed exhibition that the Royal Academy dedicates to Marina Abramovic (from 23/9 to 10/10). Before that, the queen of performance will present the show 7 Deaths of Maria Callas at the Liceu. The African-American Faith Ringgold, a leading figure in feminist art and the Black Lives Matter movement, will also be a guest at the Musée Picasso in Paris (from 1/31 to 7/2).
The protagonist of one of the exhibitions that is currently causing a sensation in London, Lucian Freud will travel to the Thyssen in Madrid with fifty works showing the great master in the nude (from 2/14 to 6/18). The Austrian Oskar Kokoschka, another of the greats of the 20th century, will visit us at the Guggenheim Bilbao (from 3/17 to 9/3) and, pay attention, because the great author of living works Tino Sehgal will be at the Botín (from 7/ 10 to 2/11) and even the libertine Marquis de Sade promises to take shape at the CCCB (from 5/10 to 10/15). Another essential thinker, the writer and art critic John Berger will be invoked in the Virreina with all the force of his political charge (from 5/13 to 10/15).
As for the thematic samples, two that from the present bring us closer to the future. The CCCB, in an exhibition co-organized with the Barbican Center in London in collaboration with the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, will explore the potential of AI (from 10/17) and the Design Hub will bring together the best of digital art in spring.
In the field of photography, the Mapfre Foundation's KBr once again bets heavily with two exhibitions dedicated to the German artist Ilse Bing, the paradigm of the new woman in the interwar period (from 2/15 to 5/14), and to the Italian Tina Modotti, who was an actress in Hollywood in the twenties and ended up developing a revolutionary career as a photographer in Mexico (from 6/6 to 9/3). FotoColectania will spotlight the work of Marcelo Brodsky, an Argentine author who documented the movements of 1968 in different parts of the world, lived in exile in Barcelona in the 1970s and returned to his country to record the consequences of the dictatorship (from February to May).
And, after its presentation in Madrid, CaixaForum will show Expanded Visions in Barcelona. Photography and experimentation, a set of 172 images from the Center Pompidou in Paris, From Man Ray to Gilbert
