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Museu Picasso Review

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Museu Picasso

Address: Carrer Montcada 15-23, Born-Ribera, Barcelona, Catalonia, 08003
Phone: 93/319-6310
www.museupicasso.bcn.cat

Category: Museums/Galleries
Location: Ciutat Vella (Old City)

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Fodor's Review:

Picasso spent key formative years (1895-1904) in Barcelona, when he was a young Bohemian, and never forgot these good times. (His Demoiselles d'Avignon was, in fact, inspired by the eponymous Barcelona street known for its brothels, not by the French city.) A collection of his work can be found in Carrer Montcada, known for Barcelona's most elegant medieval and Renaissance palaces, five of which are occupied by the Picasso Museum. Though the 3,600-work permanent collection is strong on his early production, don't expect to find many of the artist's most famous works. Picasso's longtime crony and personal secretary Jaume Sabartés donated his private collection to this museum in 1960, and Picasso himself donated another 1,700 works in 1970. Displays include childhood and adolescent sketches, works from Picasso's Blue and Rose periods, and the famous 44 cubist studies based on Velázquez's Las Meninas. The sketches, oils, schoolboy caricatures, and drawings from Picasso's early years in La Coruña and, later, in Barcelona are perhaps the most fascinating part of the museum, showing the facility the artist possessed from an early age. His La Primera Communión (First Communion), painted at the age of 15, for which he was given a short review in the local press, was an important achievement for the young Picasso, and the Las Meninas studies and the bright Pichones (Pigeons) series provide a final explosion of color and light. Suite 156, a series of erotic and playful drawings on display when temporary exhibits allow space, may be the best of all.

Cost: EUR 9.50; free 1st Sun. of month
Open: Tues.-Sun. 10-8.
Metro: Catalunya, Liceu, Jaume I

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