Picasso. The Sketchbooks

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Image courtesy of the Picasso Museum.

Picasso used sketchbooks as a kind of diary in which he investigated and experimented in order to solve the problems inherent in his creative process. Such was the importance of these sketchbooks for the painter that in 1907 he wrote on the pages of one of them: “Je suis le cahier” (I am the sketchbook). Moreover, he never disposed of most of his sketchbooks, but instead kept them with him all his life.

The Museu Picasso Barcelona has nineteen of the one hundred and seventy-five sketchbooks that Picasso filled with his drawings between 1894 and 1967, and seventeen of these are from a donation made by the artist in 1970, corresponding to the period of his childhood and youth. The other two are acquisitions.

It is essential to display these sketchbooks to the public and make them available to specialists by means of a catalogue raisonné because of their importance and consistency and also the quality of the drawings they contain. They can therefore contribute to a greater understanding of the artist’s work and, in turn, lead to a comprehensively researched publication on the techniques, procedures and themes that appear in them.

This exhibition displays the entirety of these drawings by using a suitable technology that makes them attractive to the general public, as well as displaying the universe of subject matter contained in them, themes that are common in the artist’s work or that otherwise disappear over time. A series of works will be displayed to contextualize them and demonstrate their iconographic and stylistic richness: family portraits, landscapes, academic learning by copying plates, plaster casts, sculptures and studies of nature, Picasso’s relationship with the masters—Velázquez, El Greco, Goya—subject matter for major compositions, etc. Works from the Picasso museum and those from other institutions will be included, including the Museo del Prado, Calcografía Nacional, Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, Museu de Montserrat, MNAC and Reial Acadèmia de Belles Arts de Sant Jordi.

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