Picasso Exhibition: The Sacred and the Profane
As part of the marking of the 50th anniversary of the death one of the greatest artists of the 20th century, Pablo Picasso, Madrid´s Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum is holding a special exhibition that that explores the religious themes of his most admired works.
The exhibition entitled “Picasso: The Sacred and the Profane,” explores how the artist approached the main themes and genres of traditional European art: history, religion, myths, portraiture and still lifes.
It showcases the spirit with which Picasso looked at the art of the past and transformed it into personal art that is traumatic and existential, as well as dynamic and optimistic.
Curated by Paloma Alarcó, the exhibition brings together a total of 38 works, 22 of them by Picasso. In addition to the eight exhibits from the Thyssen collections, there are several loans from international museums such as the Musée National Picasso-Paris.
In addition, there are paintings by El Greco, Rubens, Zurbarán, Van der Hamen, Delacroix, a sculpture by Pedro de Mena and some engravings by Goya.
Picasso´s personal reinterpretation of the themes of pagan and Judeo-Christian traditions myths and rites and the way they are entwined his creations, which feature the more universal issues of life, death, sex, violence and pain.
For Picasso, “art was a means of exorcising both his own fears and the challenges facing humanity. He considered himself to be a kind of shaman, endowed with a supernatural power that gave him the ability to metamorphose the visible world”.
In addition to works of Picasso there are paintings by El Greco, Rubens, Zurbarán, Van der Hamen, Delacroix, a sculpture by Pedro de Mena and some engravings by Goya which together are organised into three sections: the sacred and the profane, identities and the visual and the tangible.
Pablo Picasso was born in Málaga, Spain on 25 October 1881, and died in the French town of Mougins on 8 April 1973. His early years were in Madrid where he studied at the Bellas Artes de San Fernando but he spent the majority of his working life in Paris where he produced some of his most famous work.
