The Picasso Museum is celebrating the 60th anniversary of its opening and the 50th anniversary of the great artist's death. And he celebrates it by exploring, for example, the relationship between Pablo Picasso and Catalonia, an argument that last month gave rise to a superficial and didactic exhibition at the Espai Mercè Sala de TMB. But this exciting, intense and eternal relationship deserves to be evoked, if only through a synthesis.
Pablo Picasso arrived in Barcelona when he was 13 years old. Curious and sociable, he benefited more from the bohemian atmosphere of the 4 Cats than the paternal atmosphere of the Llotja. Heeding the advice of the experienced Rusiñol and Casas, he understood that he had to make a pilgrimage to Paris, an adventure he would not have undertaken if he had continued in Málaga or A Coruña.
In Barcelona, he gained an intense and lasting relationship with friends, such as the one he had with Pallarés or the Reventós, and became a sex addict, either in the brothel or with his passionate loves.
His friend Pallarés invited him in 1890 for a long healing stay in his native Horta; on a daring pictorial excursion through the ports, that older friend saved his life when he prevented him from falling into a precipice. Picasso realized that in that village he discovered what life really is.
He was already able to show his portraits at Als 4 Gats, an exhibition that earned La Vanguardia its first review by a critic: it was 1900.
The trip to Paris convinced him that it had to be his goal, not just an artistic one. Barcelona passed to the second term, but he would never forget it.
His friend Reventós and the sculptor Casanovas recommended him to go to Gósol. He was well accompanied, for the love of the moment: Fernande Olivier. The place fascinated him to the point of abandoning the melancholic blues of Barcelona, varying the palette and daring with an avant-garde that would lead him to a transcendental, revolutionary, historical painting. Ladies and Avignon? Oh, come on! The obvious eroticism of the leek and the watermelon, the medical student with the skull, the sailor and the whores revealed in the sketches another very daring inspiration that he knew: The ladies of Carrer d'Avinyó.
Barcelona was still present, not least because of the family already rooted. Always restless, Paris was well worth the pause of a hiatus fostered by the attraction of the Mediterranean and that of artist friends, such as Manolo Hugué. In Cadaqués, he delved so much into Cubism that he almost poured it into abstraction, and at that point he stopped. And then Ceret, who deserved to return.
In 1917, the collaboration in Diaguilev's ballet presented at the Liceu made him spend half a year in his Barcelona and with his family, accompanied by his new love: the dancer Olga. Here he does not stop painting local subjects, not even the monument to Columbus. The photo with about twenty colleagues and friends as recognition at Galeries Laietanes confirmed that the Parisian was first and foremost a Barcelonan. Dona Harlequin at the municipal museum. And he will repeat the visits: the last one will be in 1934.
The uncivil war will then raise an insurmountable border after degenerating into a dictatorship. At the Pavilion of the Republic in Paris, with his Gernika, he strengthened ties with Miró. He helped the Catalan refugees. The intimate professional help of his old friend Sabartés would become the daily presence that Barcelona reminded him of.
In his fifties he felt homesick for the sea and, above all, for Catalonia, and Northern Catalonia allowed him to get closer: Perpignan, Ceret, Cotlliure. He has his portrait taken with a mask, frequents and paints bulls that had attracted him so much in his Barcelona youth, at Vauvenargues Castle, hangs a large Catalan flag at the head of the bed, which he even painted on the backs of the chairs of the dining room I unsuccessfully asked Jacqueline Picasso's daughter to donate these very significant seats to the museum.
He forged other friendships: the Gilis, Antoni Clavé and, above all, the Gaspares, to whom before his departure he revealed his envy: "How lucky you are to go to Barcelona, I can't!".
The relationship with his beloved and longed-for Barcelona did not stop intensifying. The frieze of the College of Architects. He gave away a great painting when there were floods in the Vallès. The museum on Carrer Montcada, the result of the generosity of Sabartés (dissuaded by Picasso from offering his collection in Malaga, where "they don't know who I am") and the courage of Mayor Porcioles.
After spending an entire afternoon with the painter in 1963, I wrote a two-page report for the magazine Destino that suffered five weeks of censorship as a severe warning, since it was published without any plaster. My friend Palau i Fabre, his authorized biographer, when he returned from a visit, entrusted me with the great news that Picasso had announced to him: "Tell Barcelona that Las meninas are for Barcelona". The formidable donation of what the Vilató family treasured was made possible thanks to the professionalism of notary Raimon Noguera.
I proposed to dedicate eight color pages of the Sunday edition of the newspaper to his 90th birthday, since La Vanguardia, which had published the first review of his first exhibition, deserved to commemorate such a significant date. Pallarés told me about his memories, I didn't manage to talk Picasso into painting the cover; I then asked Miró and he revealed that he was delighted. It was the congratulations of the highest category that was published around the world, and there were not a few. Picasso had this work and the copy of the newspaper together in a highly visible place in a relevant room, and displayed it proudly, as his photographer, Douglas Duncan, revealed to me.
