How to Visit the Picasso Museum in Barcelona

The Picasso Museum in Barcelona is housed in five adjoining medieval palaces in the heart of the historic El Born neighbourhood. The museum opened its doors to the public in 1963, thanks to the initiative of Picasso’s lifelong friend and personal secretary, Jaime Sabartés. The collection primarily consists of works donated by Sabartés, showcasing Picasso’s formative years and early artistic development.

Born in 1881, Pablo Picasso was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, and one of the most influential artists of the 20th century. Over a career spanning nine tumultuous decades, Picasso’s revolutionary artistic style played a pivotal role in the development of modern art, providing groundbreaking contributions to a variety of movements including Cubism and Surrealism. Picasso’s diverse body of work includes paintings, sculptures, ceramics, drawings, and prints, all of which feature in the collection of the Museu Picasso in Barcelona.

The Picasso Museum boasts an extensive collection of over 4,000 works by the artist, offering visitors a comprehensive overview of his prolific career. The museum is divided into sections, each of which focuses on a different aspect of the artist’s output. Some notable highlights include:

Picasso was the definition of an early bloomer, outstripping his teachers at art school as a teenager and gaining a reputation as a formidable artist before even turning 20. Picasso’s family moved to Barcelona when the young Pablo was still a child, and the Picasso Museum is home to a series of early paintings and drawings that reveal his extraordinarily precocious talent during these formative years. Works such as his Self Portrait, painted when he was just 15, and the First Communion, painted in the same year, showcase an assurance that belies the artist’s tender years.

Picasso’s so-called Blue Period, when his canvasses were predominantly painted in sombre shades of blue, green and grey, lasted from approximately 1901 to 1904 and was characterized by themes of melancholy, poverty, and human suffering – reflecting Picasso’s personal struggles and his response to the dire social conditions of the time. The untimely death of the artist’s dear friend Carlos Casagemas by suicide precipitated Picasso’s decision to confront subjects of suffering and marginalisation. Striking works to look out for in this section include The Dead Woman and The Blind Man.

Starting around 1907, Picasso began experimenting with a revolutionary new technique known as Cubism alongside his collaborator Georges Braque. Cubism was defined by the fragmentation of figures and objects into abstracted geometric shapes in a manner that deconstructed conventional points of view, rules of perspective and the concept of form itself. Fine examples of Picasso’s evolving Cubist sensibilities in the Picasso Museum in Barcelona include a cityscape of The Passeig de Colom and the portraits of Blanquita Suárez and Jaume Sabartes.

Picasso’s art was never limited to one medium, and as his career progressed he became more interested in craft forms like ceramics. Picasso’s interest in ceramics was sparked during a visit to the Madoura pottery workshop in Vallauris, France, in 1946, after which he began to explore the possibilities of working with clay. Picasso’s ceramics are often highly experimental, moving far beyond the traditional confines of this practical medium. The Picasso Museum in Barcelona holds a wide range of these unconventional ceramic pieces, which brilliantly showcase the artist’s unceasing creativity.

Picasso’s “Las Meninas” series is a remarkable set of paintings created by the artist in 1957. The series is inspired by Diego Velázquez’s famous 1656 painting “Las Meninas,” which depicts the Spanish royal family in a large room, with the young Infanta Margarita Teresa surrounded by her maids of honour, courtiers, and other figures. Picasso’s fascination with Velázquez’s masterpiece led him to reinterpret the composition in his own unique style. In his series, Picasso deconstructs and reimagines the elements of “Las Meninas” in a series of 44 separate works that explore themes of perception, representation, and artistic influence. Occupying pride of place in a dedicated gallery, the Meninas studies are arguably the Museum’s magnificent highlight.

For a comprehensive guide to the masterpieces of the collection you need to see, check out our dedicated guide to the highlights of the Picasso Museum in Barcelona.