
Day Trip Rucksack
Small 10L day trip and museums rucksack
The Picasso Museum of Barcelona, opened on 9 March 1963 is an expansive permanent Picasso collection of over 4000 works housed within 5 adjacent medieval palaces in Montcada Street in the fashionable Born District of Barcelona.
Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 - 8 April 1973) was a prolific Spanish painter, sculptor, print-maker, ceramicist and theatre designer who's work can be divided into periods.
The Picasso Museum is actually an amalgamation of five large mansion houses (or minor palaces!) of former medieval 13th and 14th century wealthy merchants in Montcada street of the Born Neighbourhood of Barcelona with a total space of over ten thousand square metres.
All five palaces are in the style of Gothic Catalan and follow the same layout of a central open courtyard with external stairs to the first floor (or noble floor). The ground floor was stables and storage space.
Click on any of the 10 images to open full screen gallery player
When you visit the museum you will find several large rooms that retain the palatial decoration and ceiling frescoes so do not forget to look up.
The museum is well organised into different rooms that display works from the many periods of Picasso's life as an artist. Each room has a plaque about that period as well as a complete audio guide so don't forget to take headphones.
It is permitted to take photos for personal use without flash but not for publishing without prior written permission so I cannot post a large gallery of photos from inside the museum.
It is also possible to visit the museum fee of charge on Thursday afternoons from 16:00h to 19:00h and the first Sunday of each month. The Museum also hosts open door days on 12th and 13th February, 18th May and 24th September.
I have tried to visit the Picasso Museum for free on several occasions and observed long queue's all the way up Montcada street and so decided to give it a miss. Also because of the high demand for free visits they must be booked up to four days in advance via the official website.
I Visited the museum on a Wednesday at lunchtime (13:30h) paying for an adult ticket in the ticket office, no pre booking. The museum was not over crowded and I could view all the art with plenty of time to enjoy the museum without the pressures of crowd herding, waiting or forced pace flow control. It is my opinion that this is one of the museums where it is best to book in advance and go really early or at lunchtime to get the best museum experience due to its popularity.
The cost of a basic ticket starts from 12 € but it is worth paying 19 € to include the temporary exhibitions. Tickets can be purchased online via the Picasso Museum official website.
Alternatively, consider on of the combined multi museum tickets or guided tours below.
Below is a brief biography of Pablo Picasso which will give insight into his life and what you will see in the Picasso Museum in Barcelona.
Picasso's Blue Period (1901-1904) characterised by paintings rendered in shades of blue and blue-green only.
Picasso's Rose Period (1904-1906) characterised by a lighter tone and style utilising orange and pink colours and featuring many circus people, acrobats and harlequins known in France as saltimbanques.
Picasso's African-influenced Period (1907-1909) being powerfully impressed by African artifacts he saw in June 1907 in the ethnographic museum at Palais du Trocadero in Paris.
Analytic cubism (1909-1912) is a style of painting Picasso developed with Georges Braque using monochrome brownish and neutral colours.
Synthetic cubism (1912-1919) was a further development of the genre of cubism, in which cut paper fragments of wallpaper or newspaper pages were pasted into compositions marking the first use of collage in fine art.
Picasso was living in France During the first world war but made his first trip to Italy in 1917. Picasso produced work in a neoclassical style being influenced by the painters Raphael and Ingres.
The Great Depression to MoMA exhibition (1930-1939) During the 1930s the Minotaur replaced the harlequin as a common motif in his work. His use of the Minotaur came partly from his contact with the surrealists, who often used it as their symbol.
In 1939 and 1940 the Museum of Modern Art in New York City held a major retrospective of Picasso's principal works. This exhibition lionized Picasso, brought into full public view in America the scope of his artistry, and resulted in a reinterpretation of his work by contemporary art historians and scholars.
During World War two Picasso remained in Paris while the Germans occupied the city. Picasso's artistic style did not fit the Nazi ideal of art and so was not exhibited and he was often harassed by the Gestapo. The Germans outlawed bronze casting in Paris (war material shortages) but Picasso continued using bronze smuggled to him by the French Resistance.
Picasso also wrote poetry as an alternative outlet writing over three hundred mostly untitled poems between Between 1935 and 1959 as well as two full-length plays.
In 1944 after the liberation of Paris Picasso, then 63 years old, began a romantic relationship with a young art student named Francoise Gilot. She was 40 years younger than he was. Picasso and Gilot began to live together eventually having two children but Francoise and the children left Picasso because of his many infidelities. This was a huge blow to Picasso.
Picasso was one of 250 sculptors who exhibited in the 3rd Sculpture International held at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in mid-1949.
In addition to his artistic accomplishments, Picasso made a few film appearances, always as himself, including a cameo in Jean Cocteau's Testament of Orpheus (1960). In 1955, he helped make the film Le Mystere Picasso
In 1962 he was commissioned to make a 15 metre high public sculpture to be built in Chicago known as the Chicago Picasso. The sculpture is ambiguous and controversial and what it represents is not known. The sculpture was unveiled in 1967. Picasso refused to be paid $100,000 for it, donating it to the people of the city.
Picasso's final works were a mixture of styles, more daring and more colourful and expressive. From 1968 to 1971 he produced a torrent of paintings and hundreds of copperplate etchings. At the time these works were dismissed by most as pornographic fantasies of an impotent old man or the slapdash works of an artist who was past his prime but have since gained critical acclaim.
Picasso had affairs with women of an even greater age disparity than his and Gilot's. In 1951 Picasso had a six-week affair with Genevieve Laporte, four years younger than Gilot even though he was still involved with Gilot. By his 70s many paintings, ink drawings and prints have a theme of an old grotesque dwarf as the doting lover of a beautiful young model.
Jacqueline Roque (1927-1986) worked at the Madoura Pottery in Vallauris on the French Riviera where Picasso made and painted ceramics. She became his lover, and then his second wife in 1961 remaining with Picasso for the rest of his life. His marriage to Roque was also a means of revenge against Gilot. Picasso encouraged Gillot to divorce her then husband to marry Picasso though he had already secretly married Roque.
By this time, Picasso had constructed a huge Gothic home, and could afford large villas in the south of France such as Mas Notre-Dame-de-Vie on the outskirts of Mougins and in the Provence-Alpes-Cote d'Azur. He was an international celebrity, with often as much interest in his personal life as his art.
Picasso died on 8 April 1973 aged 91 in Mougins, France from a pulmonary edema and heart failure while he and his wife Jacqueline entertained friends for dinner. He is interred at the Chateau of Vauvenargues near Aix-en-Provence, a property he had acquired in 1958 and occupied with Jacqueline between 1959 and 1962. Devastated and lonely after the death of Picasso, Jacqueline killed herself by gunshot in 1986 when she was 59 years old.
The Picasso Museum is fully accessible to people who use wheelchairs. There is an elevator that connects the ground floor with the first floor exhibition rooms. Guide dogs are permitted.
The museum does not specify baby pushchair but it is very expansive with wide galleries so I do not think there will be any restrictions.
You will be denied access with large rucksacks, bags and other over sized items so only attend with small bags.
There are no bicycle anchorage points outside the Picasso Museum. Nearest can be found in Carrer de Princesa 20. Bicycles in this part of town have a high probability of being stolen.
Don't forget headphones for the audio guide.
Address: Carrer de Montcada 15-23, Barcelona. 08003
Nearest Metro is Jaime I on the yellow (L4) line.
The Picasso Museum is in Calle Montcada, a narrow passage that can be found behind the Santa Maria de Mar Basilica/Cathedral or from Calle Princesa.
Click on any one of the 2 PDFs to view in full screen and download.