Barcelona

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Museu Picasso

C/Montcada 15-23, Born

The Picasso Museum takes up a row of medieval mansions, with the main entrance now at the Palau Meca, and the exit at the Palau Aguilar. By no means an overview of the artist’s work, it is a record of the vital formative years that the young Picasso spent nearby at La Llotja art school (where his father taught), and later hanging out with Catalonia’s fin-de-siècle avant-garde.

The presentation of Picasso’s development from 1890 to 1904, from deft pre-adolescent portraits to sketchy landscapes to the intense innovations of his Blue Period, is seamless and unbeatable; the collection then leaps to a gallery of mature Cubist paintings from 1917. The pièce de résistance, however, is the complete series of 57 canvases based on Velázquez’s famous Las Meninas, donated by Picasso himself, and now stretching through three rooms. The display later ends with a wonderful collection of ceramics that were donated by Picasso’s widow. Temporary exhibitions are held under the magnificent coffered ceiling of the Palau Finestres.

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