"Face to face. Picasso and the ancient masters" at the Museo Picasso Málaga

The Museu Picasso Málaga presents, from February 22 to June 26, 2022, the exhibition Cara a cara. Picasso and the Ancient Masters, an exhibition organized in collaboration with the Museum of Fine Arts of Seville which will feature paintings by El Greco, Francisco Pacheco, Giovanni Battista Caracciolo, Francisco de Zurbarán, Cornelius Norbertus Gijsbretchs, Bernardo Lorente Germán and Diego Bejarano along with important works by Pablo Picasso.

Face to face. Picasso and the Ancient Masters, curated by Michael FitzGerald, presents paintings from the remarkable collection of the Museum of Fine Arts in Seville by Spanish masters and other European countries in front of nine outstanding works by Picasso belonging to the Almine i Bernard Foundation Ruiz-Picasso for Art (FABA). The MPM's exhibition is distinguished from the one previously held at the Museum of Fine Arts in Seville by the inclusion of an exceptional additional painting by Picasso from the collection of the Museum of Malaga.

This exhibition offers the visitor a unique opportunity to discover links between the work of Picasso and a selection of works by great masters of the past, by juxtaposing his paintings with those of these painters. These pairings not only allow the viewer to establish specific comparisons between the work of Picasso and that of the ancient masters to understand the deep roots of the art of the Malagan painter in Spanish traditions, but also the juxtapositions they allow us to discern how Picasso transformed these traditions into the revolutionary art of the twentieth century.

The themes of this exhibition revolve around the social and psychological significance of portraiture, the role of illusionist realism in painting or meditation on mortality. A wide range of Picasso styles and eras have also been selected to represent the diversity of his art throughout his career. All of these issues are reflected in seven groups of works where the viewer can observe how Picasso emulates his predecessors, sometimes with a particular sense of humor.