Many years ago, when Barcelona was another city, the Ruiz Picasso family arrived in Barcelona and settled in a building next to the Port. Pablo, then 13 years old, began naturally, almost involuntarily, an artistic study of his port environment: he captured in his drawings, sketches and paintings the landscapes that made up his walks, his habits and his stays on the beaches.
That same port, now occupied by the controversial America’s Cup, is now the setting, more than 100 years later, for an exhibition that recovers that study, that look, and exhibits in the open air paintings with which Picasso portrayed that port and photographs that show us how the object of inspiration of the artist looked in the 19th century.
It does so through the exhibition Picasso i el port. 1895 – 1904, an urban exhibition at the Port Vell that illustrates the artist’s connection with the seafront of the Catalan capital, which will be open from September 30, 22024 to February 28, 2025.
To illustrate this, the curator of the exhibition, Eugènia Peña, has designed 6 stops that not only illustrate the sociocultural and technological aspects of the period covered (1895-1904), but also compare them with the gaze of Picasso and his works on the Barcelona coast.
The 6 stops of the visit
The tour of the exhibition Picasso i el Port begins at the Moll del Dipòsit, where the tour starts through large-format panels representing an image of a work by Picasso, in relation to a category and a contextual cartouche. The areas of the tour are:
- Picasso’s port, which primarily illustrates Picasso’s years in the port of Barcelona between 1895 and 1904.
- From sail to steam, where the emphasis is placed on the technological changes in the ships and the replacement of the artisanal wooden boat model by the industrial iron one.
- A new port, which shows the geographical transformation of the port and how this altered its uses.
- Port work, to show how the evolution and changes in the shape of the port also altered and modified the types of work that were carried out there.
- Gastronomy and leisure, where emphasis is placed on the establishments and premises adjacent to the port.
- Social life by the sea, or how the port was used and the customs of the people who passed through it.