Brigitte Baer Collection

Producers and their history

This documentary collection is made up of three blocks of different origins: Bernhard Geiser's catalogue cards, the publishing material of the Galerie Kornfeld and the documentation generated exclusively by Brigitte Baer as historian and cataloguer of Picasso's graphic work. The documentary collection produced and preserved by Bernhard Geiser was deposited in the Galerie Kornfeld in 1967 when he died. In 1980, Brigitte Baer received this documentation and continued to work on completing the catalogue raisonné. In 2005, Baer's nephew, David Leclerc, inherited the archive and, in 2015, donated it to the Museu Picasso in Barcelona. All parties agreed to incorporate the different sources into what we now call the Brigitte Baer Collection.

Scope and content

Walking through the Brigitte Baer Collection means immersing oneself in a dual world: on the one hand, the Baer universe – the meticulous, exquisite and intelligent work and her enthusiasm for printmaking–  and, on the other, Picasso's self-portrait through his engravings. Baer described Picasso's graphic work as a diary of the artist's emotions; perhaps that is why we could say that Baer's archive is like a diary of his passion for printmaking.
Baer's documentary corpus is like a palimpsest: she sediments her knowledge in documentation and layers and turns it into an ever-living and mutating element. We hope that, as she wished, her legacy will be a source of inspiration for future researchers and an invitation to continue her work.

Entry details

Museu Picasso, Barcelona. Brigitte Baer Collection. Donation David Leclerc, 2015.