A national historical and artistic monument, Picasso's birthplace is one of the most visited places by tourists from all over the world. The soul of the artist is captured in its walls, in every corridor, his personality is still alive in every work he carried out.
Today we will do the tour in its second part, showing the rooms that have caught my attention the most. To see the first part of the tour you can click here.
One of the most beautiful rooms is the one dedicated to Lifestyle, number 5, completely refurbished a few months ago, where you can appreciate the space that constituted the main living room of the house and whose balconies overlook the Plaza de la Merced.
Picasso's family belonged to the bourgeois class and it was in this room, the living-dining room, that they received visitors.
Its walls are decorated with various pictures of the family, some painted by his father and others dedicated especially to him.
The furniture belongs to the 19th century, of great beauty. These pieces of furniture were previously in another place and with the restoration they took a remarkable place in this room.
On the style table we can see books of the period, and maps.
We can see a bust of a Madonna dolorosa, characteristic of the house.
At the other end of the room, a table with two chairs containing more books, notebooks, and other objects such as a sculpture. This area is accompanied by a glass cabinet, a library with decorations, mirrors and more oil paintings.
This place generates a feeling of being transported to the time when Picasso lived there, very emotional and beautiful.
As for room 6, the first thing we see is an autograph signature of the artist which says: "Picasso de Málaga", with a very marked identity.
A chronological line appears, from birth to 1901.
On display are Picasso's baptismal clothes, his baptismal certificate and other objects from when he was a baby and also from his childhood.
We see the shoes in which he learned to walk, figures with which he played as a child and numerous photographs showing different experiences of the artist.
Room 7 is dedicated to pigeons, as the main theme in the paintings of José Ruiz Blasco, Picasso's father, was pigeons, and therefore his son took up these ideas.
Thus it is that in the artist's first drawings we can find pigeons in a dovecote in 1890. Such was the diffusion of this theme referring to pigeons, that it was adopted as a symbol of peace. This came about thanks to the writings of Lois Aragon, who, at the Peace Congress in Paris in 1949, succeeded in making a picture of a white dove a success, and so Picasso multiplied his works referring to doves.
A great advocate of peace and the disarmament of nuclear weapons, he took part in the 1950 Congress telling how he learned from his father to paint the famous pigeons.
In this beautiful room we find several drawings and pictures about pigeons painted by Pablo Picasso's father, engravings by him and also pieces of documentaries where Picasso attended the Peace Congresses.
Room 9 is called the Mediterranean and, as its name indicates, is dedicated to the Mediterranean Sea, with numerous oil paintings of the sea, of the port of Malaga. The first work was done with his father's paintings, in secret, the earliest and the first painted by Picasso.
The sea was one of the painter's passions, he painted nude bathers, nymphs and fauns. He was very fond of the mythology of the sea, painting Greek motifs, and later, on a visit to Pompeii, he enhanced this taste for the sea.
You can see different engravings, drawings, paintings and ceramics, as well as video screens where he can be seen enjoying the sea.
The last room, but no less important, is devoted to the theme of Bulls. Another taste that he inherited from his father, since he was a child. He was passionate about the spectacle of bullfighting and this was very much reflected in his works.
Picasso developed this theme throughout his life and from different points of view, as something artistic and aesthetic and at other times as a struggle between life and death and within this point of view is his great work Guernica.
This room is full of the bullfighting theme, both in engravings, ceramics, drawings, paintings and many photographs.
During Franco's dictatorship, Picasso was exiled in France, where he attended bullfights. He was very homesick.
On display is an exact replica of the Spanish cape in which he was wrapped by his friend Eugenio Arias when the painter died in 1973. The cape was given to him by his last wife Jacqueline. This cape was used many times by Picasso when he went to the bullfights and the artist was buried in it.
At the end of the tour I was struck by this last sentence written on one of the walls by Mercedes Guillén: "I asked her once what was her first memory of her childhood. The light - she told me - Yes, yes, my first memory is the light. I am looking at it.
A great artist, a very emotional visit through the life of this great artist, his childhood, family, passions and love for the sea and bullfighting.
I hope you have enjoyed this tour. Best regards to all of you and see you next time.
Amonet.
All photographs are my own.
Separators created by me in Photoshop.
Used translator Deepl.com free version.
[//]:# (!pinmapple 36.72404 lat -4.41763 long Picasso Birthplace Museum - Part 2 📷 Málaga - Spain d3scr)