In the Name of the Father

‘I hope that what I have done gives rise to something very different in those who come after me,’ Picasso said, opening himself to the new becomings of art and life. The exhibition now being presented in the Museu Picasso in Barcelona with the title IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER has its origin in the need for a critical exploration of Picasso’s artistic and existential legacy in order to create a network of interrelations which make it possible to open up new paths, as he himself hoped. The exhibition brings together a number of contemporary artists for whom analysis of the complexity of Picasso’s aesthetic and ideological heritage is inescapable. Picasso is a father figure to be loved, to be lived with or to be critically combatted. His political position, his inexhaustible urge to discover new aesthetic languages, his desire to connect with classical mythology and with the Mediterranean cultural heritage, his relationship with women as models and as objects of desire, his interest in poetry and in ancestral rituals such as bullfighting, and even the effects of his fame and the commercial and tourist exploitation of his name are engaged with in this exhibition to generate a critical and celebratory condensation. The different lines of reflection are made concrete in existing works, in new pieces and in special interventions in the permanent collection. Most of the selected works are located in rooms and spaces on the ground floor of the museum, but it has also been possible to intervene delicately in the collection and, specifically, in the legacy of 1968.