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This exhibition is a tribute to this essential part of
our collection, exploring Picasso’s links with the tradition of Spanish
painting, and with Velázquez in particular, while proposing new
readings of the series Las Meninas, thanks in part to the numerous
subsequent interpretations and contributions made by various
contemporary artists..
Between August and December 1957, in his studio at La
Californie, Cannes, Picasso embarked on a comprehensive analysis of Las
Meninas by Velázquez  in line with the interpretations of
works by great artists —Manet, Courbet, Poussin, Delacroix, El Greco,
Cranach…— that he made from the end of World War II on. In 1968 the
artist donated this entire series of fifty-eight oil paintings,
consisting of forty-four interpretations of the Velázquez picture, nine
Pigeons, three landscapes and two free interpretations, to the Museu
Picasso in Barcelona.
Picasso’s own account of his initial attitude when he
created his
Meninas , was recorded by Jaume Sabartés in
his book L’Atelier de Picasso, published in 1952: 'If anyone were to
copy Las Meninas in complete good faith, and for example got to a
certain point – and if I were the copier – would say to myself, and if
I just put this a little more to the right or to the left?. I would try
to do it in my own way, forgetting about Velázquez”.
So it is not only a matter of going back into the past
and highlighting Picasso’s continuities and breaks with tradition , but also of exploring the survival
of the motif of Las Meninas through the history of art to the present,
bringing together the many contemporary interpretations of it that
engage in a dialogue not only with the work by Velázquez but also and
very evidently with the work created by Picasso. This is, then, an
exhibition that invites the visitor to rediscover the Museum’s
collection and its permanent exhibition in the light of this new
contextualization.
 "Meninas
and Infantas: History of a Seduction: 1656-1901"
Text
of Javier Portús, reproduced in the
catalogue
"‘Más
Meninas’: Through the Looking Glass, Repeatedly"
Text
of Gertje R. Utley, reproduced in the
catalogue
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 Artists
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 Exhibition
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